Ten Years In: The Business Changed. So Did I.

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Success looks different from the inside.

“Lindsey, you’re crushing it.”

You’d think as an achiever by nature that would be the best compliment to receive, right? Eh, not always. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of those well-intended words over the last ten years. What’s interesting is that many times they came during seasons when I felt anything but.

From the outside, things looked great. Business was growing. I was speaking on stages that mattered to me. My team was expanding. I was creating and launching new things. I was invited to sit at “important” tables.

But underneath the surface? Picture the proverbial duck gliding calmly across the water while its feet are paddling furiously underneath.

That was me.

Here’s the thing: I’ve built my career around credibility and reputation, so the irony isn’t lost on me. But I’ve also learned there’s a difference between being inauthentic and recognizing that not every part of your life belongs to everyone. I wasn’t pretending those hard seasons weren’t happening. I was still living through them and I hadn’t yet learned what they had to teach me.

And maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts of reaching ten years in business: I finally have enough distance to see that some of the seasons I once would have labeled “successful” weren’t actually the kind of success I wanted at all.

So as I thought about how to commemorate ten years of being in business, I realized I wasn’t particularly interested in writing a list of accomplishments. I’m far more interested in what ten years of entrepreneurship has changed in me and what it hasn’t.

In 2016, I officially launched my company, McMillion Consulting. I’d already been doing this work since 2013, but three and a half years later, I was doing it on my own, under my own “shingle.”

I remember some of the simplest parts of starting a business feeling enormous: Setting up the business EIN, figuring out how people would pay me, and all the many learnings of what I didn’t know I didn’t know. Thankfully, I figured out a major unlock that has served me ever since (well, at least when I’m smart enough to remember): find people who have gone before you and ask for help. I had mentors who could take something that felt overwhelming to me and say, “Here’s what actually matters right now.” I needed that. But I also entered entrepreneurship with a very particular picture of success:

• Revenue mattered.
• Growth mattered.
• The size of my team mattered.

…And if I’m truthful, how other people perceived my success mattered a lot to me.

One of my original CliftonStrengths was WOO, Winning Others Over. (After the previous statement: big shocker, I know.)

I wanted to build something meaningful, absolutely. But I also wanted people to look at what I was building and think: She’s doing really well.

I wasn’t only ambitious. I was deeply attached to outcomes. I liked having a plan, knowing what came next and feeling like I could influence the result.

For a while, that definition of success worked. Until it didn’t. 

Freedom requires more than owning a business.

Roughly one year into business, my husband could see something I couldn’t yet fully admit: I was heading toward burnout.

I had few boundaries around when work stopped. Every client experience felt like it needed to be completely unique. Everything was urgent. I was doing long-term engagements that required massive amounts of my time. I had created a business, but I hadn’t created much freedom. (And isn’t more freedom one of the main motivations for becoming an entrepreneur?)

So, I started changing things.

In 2018, I joined Dan Sullivan’s Strategic Coach and found myself in rooms with entrepreneurs who were further along than I was. I was always the small fish in the pond, and I loved it. Those rooms stretched my thinking about what entrepreneurship and freedom could look like. I loved learning about The Four Freedoms: time, money, relationship, and purpose. I wanted all of it.

I moved into a coworking space in downtown Greenville, which gave me human connection (what my soul needs) and something surprisingly valuable: a “door” I could close at the end of the workday.

I also began to bring support into my business through delegation. I started to experience some freedom…

But learning a lesson once doesn’t necessarily mean you’re done learning it.

In 2020 and 2021, I made my first real attempt at scaling. I built a flagship online course, The Complete LinkedIn Profile Course™, while simultaneously taking a course to learn how to build online courses. (Talk about building the plane while flying it!) I hired my first W-2 employee. We launched several times and it was all kinds of hard that was brought to a halt when I officially hit burnout.

At one point in 2021, I lost my phone for about three hours. I drove from my office to my house and back again trying to find it…Eventually, it appeared, of all places: in the office refrigerator. True story.

Looking back, I can laugh. At the time though, it felt like a flashing neon sign from God: Enough.

I also learned that recovering from burnout does not mean escaping to the lake with your dog, taking eight naps in 48 hours and returning to work on Monday “fixed.”

Burnout accumulates over time. Unwinding it does too. 

Bigger isn’t inherently better.

Apparently, I like experiential learning. In 2023, I decided to attempt scaling again.

This time, I would bring in experts. I would invest heavily. I would build the systems, team, and infrastructure to create something bigger without personally burning myself out. And technically, I succeeded at one part of that: I didn’t burn myself out emotionally or physically. Success!

But what I also did successfully, much to my dismay: I burned myself out financially.

By the end of that year, I had to let go of most of the team I’d built. For the first time, I was looking at a business with only a few months of runway.

It was scary. And…It was humbling. Had I finally arrived at a rite of passage as an entrepreneur? “Run your business into the ground and see if you can survive the rebuild?”

I’m not convinced that’s a milestone to hang a hat on.

And, as life tends to do, some of my hardest seasons in business coincided with some of my hardest seasons personally. I won’t unpack all of that here, but it’s important to acknowledge because none of us experiences our professional lives in isolation.

What the valley forced me to confront was bigger than a business model: bigger was not inherently better, and the version of scale I thought I was supposed to want might not be mine.

Independence isn’t the same thing as strength.

After those initial months of launching the business and asking for help, I had developed a behavior where I prided myself on being fiercely independent. I could figure it out. I could make the decision. I could carry the responsibility. But independence and strength aren’t always the same thing.

That season forced me to let my husband into the business in a way I hadn’t before. And something surprising happened: I felt more supported. More cared for. Less alone.

That lesson has repeated itself throughout these ten years.

My team. My mentors. My coaches. My clients. My peers. The people who have worked inside McMillion Consulting for a season and those who have stayed for years.

So many of the biggest turning points in my business have come through relationships.

For someone who has built a career teaching people about the power of relationships, you’d think I might have figured that out sooner…(Insert the old “cobbler’s kids have no shoes” adage.)

Sometimes growth looks like saying no.

In early 2024, shortly after one of the hardest financial years of my business, I made a decision that looked questionable on paper: I invested significantly in a year-long entrepreneurial mastermind. To make it work, I carried credit card debt for the first time in my life. It was incredibly uncomfortable. But I trusted that I knew how to do the foundational work: help people and make money.

So I went back to basics.

We simplified the business. We focused heavily on The Profile Transformer®, the service that has become the cornerstone of McMillion Consulting.

I set goals. I closed new business. I rebuilt. And I got back in the black.

That year also gave me one of the greatest professional honors of my career: being invited to speak at CoachCon, Strategic Coach’s inaugural in-person conference. Standing on that stage in front of a community that had poured so much into me felt incredibly full circle.

But perhaps one of my most important decisions came at the end of that year, when I was invited to make another significant investment to work privately with the mastermind coach I had spent the year learning from.

The prior, less evolved version of me probably would have said yes quickly. I’ve historically been a “trust my gut” kind of person and while it has served me well in countless ways, I took a different and unfamiliar approach to this decision.

Instead, I waited. I asked questions. I sought counsel from women I respected. I talked it through with my husband and considered what another significant investment would require of the business I had just rebuilt.

I also got quiet with myself and explored what I actually wanted. And the decision then became easy: I said no.

Then, in perhaps “typical” entrepreneur fashion (for all my Quick Starts out there), I took a big right turn: instead of attempting to triple revenue to justify another investment, I decided to take my first ever (and not last) sabbatical.

I can only say that God was tapping me on the shoulder, again, to take a reflective pause in the business. This time, I listened. I set goals that would allow me to step away for nine weeks with financial ease and discovered a new version of scaling my business: a self-managing version of The Profile Transformer® where clients work directly with a Chief Architect on my team.

Years earlier, I had written a vision of scaling through repeatable systems that could reach more people with fewer people. I hadn’t abandoned that vision. The Profile Transformer® had simply become its healthier expression: scaled without more complexity, scaled without burnout and scaled with more Lindsey.

And guess what? It worked. I stepped completely away from the business I had spent years believing needed me constantly. No email. No Slack. No social media. Things ran without me. In January 2025, I took off the tracking-my-every-move Apple Watch (and I haven’t put it back on).

My ambition didn’t disappear. It evolved.

The business I started in 2016 isn’t the business I have today. And I’m certainly not the same person who started it.

But when I look back at the earliest versions of McMillion Consulting, something else strikes me: the things that mattered most haven’t changed.

Relationships. Reputation. Doing meaningful work. Empowering people to build confidence and pursue their potential. Learning and growing. Leading with integrity. Creating a real return for the people who trust us.

If anything, those things matter more to me today. What has changed is what I believe has to surround them in order for the business, and me, to be successful.

This part has taken me a while to understand.

As I became less obsessed with growth, revenue goals and productivity, I occasionally wondered:

Am I getting lazy?

Am I becoming complacent?

Am I losing my edge?

Now, I know that I’m not. Instead, I’m learning where I want to direct my energy.

I still have big dreams.

I still love being in rooms that stretch me.

I still invest in developing myself.

I still get immense energy from standing on a stage, working with a client, helping a leader see something differently or watching someone put something I taught them into practice and get a result.

I still enjoy making money.

I still want McMillion Consulting to grow.

I still want to make an impact.

I’m still ambitious. I’m just much more discerning about what deserves my ambition.

And I've realized that just because I can build something bigger doesn't necessarily mean I should. My earlier two failed attempts at scaling taught me something surprisingly simple about myself: I’m good behind a camera. But I come alive with people. Human connection is what fuels me.

That matters.

I’m learning to hold the future with an open hand.

This year, The Profile Transformer® officially became a federally registered mark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

It took nine months and the guidance of an expert to protect something my team and I have spent years building. Seeing that little ® next to its name means far more to me than I expected. It means we can continue to serve and impact professionals who believe their credibility and story matter, and we get the privilege of helping bring it to life.

I’ve also had the honor of doing some incredibly meaningful work with companies, teams and leaders this year.

I’m also earning a certification that will expand the ways I can serve leaders in the future.

And now, as McMillion Consulting turns ten, I’m preparing for my newest role.

This fall, my husband and I are stepping into the biggest promotion of our adult lives as we await the arrival of our first child, a daughter.

If you'd asked me several years ago what my business would look like in 2027, I probably would have had a very clear answer that included goals, revenue targets, plans, and milestones.

Today?

I simply do not know.

And I don’t need to know. I’m becoming surprisingly comfortable saying that.

I know I’ll continue working because I believe God gave me gifts that I’m meant to use. I know I love helping people. I know I love communicating, teaching, connecting, and creating impact.

But I don't yet know exactly how those things will fit alongside motherhood. I’ve never been a mother before. And while I know billions of women have done it before me, it is my first go at this new role. Why would I pretend to know exactly what I'll want before I've even met our daughter?

Ten years ago, that kind of uncertainty would have made me incredibly uncomfortable. Today, the woman entering this next decade finds it freeing. 

Ten years later, this is success.

It isn't the size of my team. It isn't a revenue number. And it certainly isn't whether someone looking in from the outside thinks I'm “crushing it.”

Success, to me today, is being able to live a life of peace, integrity, and impact while living out my God-given purpose.

I'm proud of what I've built with the countless people who have made it possible. I'm proud of The Profile Transformer®. I'm proud of the stages I've stood on, the clients we've helped, the revenue our work has helped generate for others and the more than 10,000 people I've had the privilege of teaching. I'm proud that I've built something that can continue serving people while I step away to have our daughter.

But I'm equally proud of the things nobody can see on a résumé.

• Learning to ask for help.
• Learning to let people support me.
• Learning to recover.
• Learning to say no.
• Learning that bigger isn't inherently better.
• Learning that peace doesn't mean I've lost my ambition.
• Learning that I don't have to control every outcome to trust myself.
• And learning, slowly, to hold my plans with an open hand of trust and surrender.

Proverbs 16:9 says, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.”

I've spent much of my life planning the course. And while I'm still a planner and don't see that changing anytime soon, I can look toward the next ten years far less interested in proving that I know exactly where I'm going.

My hope is that someday our daughter sees a mother who works hard, uses her gifts, loves people well, keeps learning, takes risks, gets back up when things didn't work and knows when to ask for help.

What that looks like five or ten years from now? Ask me then.

For now, I'm celebrating ten years of McMillion Consulting with tremendous gratitude for every client, team member, mentor, colleague, friend and family member who has been part of it.

Ten years ago, I set out to build a successful business.

It turns out the business was also building me.