What Are You Building All of This For?
What Are You Building All of This For?
For years, I've heard the same question in business trainings: What's your why?
You would think after building businesses for most of my adult life, I'd have a polished answer by now. I don't. That question still stops me because I never quite know how to package the answer into the neat statement people seem to be looking for.
I can tell you that family matters to me. Freedom matters. Travel matters. Having choices matters. Building something meaningful matters. Creating income matters. Being able to work from different places matters. Making a difference in someone else's life matters. They're all true, but when I start listing them, I feel like I'm throwing a bunch of words into the air and hoping one of them sounds like the answer I'm supposed to give.
Maybe that's why I've started looking at the question differently.
Instead of asking, What's my why?, the question that makes more sense to me is: What am I building all of this for?
That one I understand.
I've Built a Business That Required Me to Be There
Long before I was building an online business, I spent twenty-five years as a painting and wallcovering contractor. Classic Coverings was a real business built one customer, one job and one referral at a time. I learned the trade working alongside my dad before eventually building something of my own.
There was a lot I loved about that business. I loved taking something worn or outdated and transforming it. I loved developing skills that not everyone had. I loved the relationships with customers and the satisfaction that came from standing back at the end of a job and seeing what had been accomplished.
But there was something else about that business that I understand much better today: it required me to physically be there.
The work was wherever the customer's walls were. If the job was an hour away, I drove an hour. If there were ladders to climb, I climbed them. If wallcovering needed to be hung, I was standing there hanging it. If a project required days of working overhead, kneeling or moving equipment, that was part of earning the income.
Being self-employed gave me freedom in some ways, but the business still had a very clear relationship with my time and my body. If I wasn't working, the work wasn't getting done.
So when I started building something new years later, I didn't want to recreate the same business with different tools. I wanted to build differently because I wanted the business to support the life I was creating, not consume it.
What Do I Want This Business to Make Possible?
That question is much easier for me to answer.
I want choices. I want the ability to decide where I work and when I work. I want mornings when I can get outside for a walk before opening my laptop. I want time with my family without feeling as though everything has to stop because I stepped away from work.
I want to travel. There are still so many places I haven't seen, trails I haven't walked and roads I haven't driven. The van dream that has been sitting on my vision board isn't simply about owning a van. It's about what that van represents: the ability to go, explore and take my work with me.
The business I'm building today can travel in a way my painting business never could.
This week is a perfect example. I'm preparing for a Zoom conversation with someone in Malaysia. We're approximately twelve hours apart. Her English isn't strong, so she asked me to speak slowly, and we're going to use Zoom so we can see each other while we talk. I'm doing some additional research beforehand because building globally means learning how things work somewhere besides my own backyard.
Twenty-five years ago, the geographic reach of my business depended largely on how far I was willing to drive my work van. Today, someone on the other side of the world can find me, start a conversation and sit across from me on a screen.
That's part of what I'm building for, too. Possibility that isn't confined by an address.
The Dream Is Only One Part of It
Having a picture of what you want doesn't build the business, though. That's something I've been thinking about a lot lately because our team recently finished reading The Slight Edge.
The principle resonates with me because when I look at how I've built anything meaningful in my life, it wasn't one enormous decision that created it. It was the small things repeated over time.
Business works the same way.
An invitation doesn't look particularly significant when you send it. Neither does a follow-up message. One conversation with a potential customer may lead somewhere or it may not. One piece of content may reach thousands of people while another barely moves. A training may give you one useful idea. A new connection may take weeks or months before you understand why the two of you crossed paths.
Those small actions can be easy to dismiss because most of them don't provide immediate evidence that they're working.
I've been living that this weekend. I've sent invitations. I've followed up with customers. I've had Zoom conversations. I've worked on content. I've attended leadership training. I've been learning a new creative platform that has tested my patience more than once. I've been preparing for conversations that may or may not lead somewhere.
None of those things by itself looks like the dream.
Together, they're how the dream gets built.
That was true when I built Classic Coverings, too. There wasn't one job that suddenly created twenty-five years in business. There were customers who told other customers. There were skills learned through repetition. There were days when everything went beautifully and days when it didn't. There was showing up again and again until all those ordinary days became a business.
Different business. Different tools. Same principle.
Maybe the Better Question Is What You Want Your Business to Give Back
There's plenty of conversation about what building a business requires from us. Time. Consistency. Learning. Discipline. Courage. Conversations. Follow-up. Getting uncomfortable. Continuing when the results aren't immediately visible.
Those things matter.
But I think there's another question worth asking: What do you want your business to give back to your life?
Maybe it's flexibility because you've spent years working around someone else's schedule. Maybe it's the ability to travel more. Maybe you want additional income without taking on another traditional job. Maybe you want something of your own after years of putting everyone else's needs first. Maybe you want meaningful work, new relationships or the challenge of learning something you never thought you'd do.
Your answer doesn't need to look like mine.
That's the point.
A business that fits your life should be built around the life you're trying to create, not somebody else's definition of success.
There will still be work involved. There will still be things you don't feel like doing. There will still be uncomfortable conversations, technology that refuses to cooperate, posts that don't perform the way you expected and people who don't answer.
Building a business that fits your life doesn't mean building one that requires nothing from you.
It means knowing what you're willing to build because of what it can make possible.
The Small Things Need Somewhere to Lead
Maybe that's what I've been missing whenever someone asks me to explain my why.
I'm not searching for one emotionally perfect sentence that's supposed to motivate me every day. Some days motivation is there and some days it isn't.
What matters more to me is direction.
When I know what I'm building toward, the small things have somewhere to lead.
The invitation matters because it can begin a conversation. The conversation matters because it can create a connection. Learning matters because it changes what I'm capable of doing next. Showing up matters because nothing grows when it's continually abandoned.
That's The Slight Edge in real life.
Small choices don't usually announce themselves as life-changing while we're making them. Most look ordinary. Sometimes they even look insignificant. Their power comes from what happens when we continue making them.
So if What's your why? leaves you staring at the page the way it sometimes does me, maybe you don't need to force an answer.
Try a different question.
What are you building all of this for, and what do you want the thing you're building to make possible in your life?
I know my answer to that question is still growing and changing as I do.
But it's a question I can answer.
And more importantly, it's one I can build toward.
I’m Claudette Eames, wellness advocate and certified mental wellness coach. Building a life that genuinely feels good to live, one choice at a time.
Claudette 🌻
Rooted in healing. Grounded in purpose.
