As a small business owner or entrepreneur, creating a thriving culture of creativity and innovation is key to sustainable growth. But what if you didn’t need to push for change constantly? Do without doing—a principle of leadership that teaches you how to lead with presence, fostering creativity without forcing it.

C.S. Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce that, "Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory." In business, success and failure are shaped by how we respond to challenges. What if your biggest obstacles were the raw materials for future success?

Burnout and momentum are not opposites—they are the same energy at different degrees. They are two sides of the same coin, separated only by vision and perspective.

Burnout feels like exhaustion, frustration, and depletion—like hitting a wall. But what if burnout isn’t failure? What if it’s a sign that your energy is misaligned? Burnout only exists when you focus on the struggle without seeing where you’re going.

We don’t really know what we’re made of until we’re tested. And sometimes, life doesn’t just test us—it breaks us open. My hardest challenge did exactly that. But in the breaking, I found something unexpected: clarity, resilience, and a version of myself I never knew existed.

Momentum comes from doing what moves us forward, not from doing more. The problem? We often feed what drains us instead of what fuels us. Studies show we have about 6,000 thoughts a day—80% are negative. If we don’t control our focus, we reinforce the very things holding us back.

It all begins with an idea.