“We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
The first time Chief Brody says that in the movie, Jaws, I thought it was almost funny.
Until I realized he wasn’t joking.
He had just come face-to-face with something much bigger than he expected.
I think many of us as solo professionals has had a “bigger boat” moment.
I remember when my son was a newborn when I looked at everything on my plate and thought, I can’t keep doing it this way.
Client work was piling up. Emails were waiting for replies. My list of things to do seemed to grow faster than I could complete it.
My first instinct was to think bigger. Maybe I needed a bigger boat.
Get a full-time nanny or send my newborn to daycare full-time.
Or for you, it may look like a bigger offer or more systems.
But here’s what people don’t always talk about when they tell you to get a bigger boat.
A bigger boat comes with a lot more.
You need a truck to haul it. Now there are more things that can break and need repairs. More registrations to keep up with. More insurance costs. More responsibility.
Sometimes the solution that looks impressive from the outside creates a whole new set of problems you didn’t expect.
Maybe I didn’t need one. We tend to overthink a lot of things.
Maybe all I needed was a life raft.
Though it doesn’t take us across the entire ocean. It gives us enough stability to regroup and make our next decision from a better place.
For me, that meant looking at what was actually taking my time and energy. That was house chores along with taking care of my son.
I looked at the tasks that needed to get done but didn’t necessarily need me. The first one was house chores. I shopped around for cleaning services in my area, and I also researched babysitters. I figured I would be a little more comfortable with someone coming to my house rather than sending him to daycare full-time. Plus, the cost would be a lot less.
That created more structure around my work and gave me back the time and energy I needed.
Of course the workload didn’t disappear overnight, but I stopped feeling like I was constantly trying to stay above water.
Building Your Bigger Boat
I will never stop reminding myself and others that the businesses that last aren’t built by people who do everything themselves.
They’re built by people who know when to adjust the sails, when to ask for help, and when a smaller solution may actually be the smarter one.
At that time, Chief Brody was definitely in the wrong boat for the size of shark he was trying to catch.
But for many of us, the problem isn’t that we’re in the wrong boat, we’re just trying to solve a life raft problem with a bigger boat.Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
We don’t always need a bigger boat.
Sometimes all we need is a life raft that keeps us steady while we figure out your next move.
The goal isn’t to build a business that looks impressive from the outside, but to build one we can actually sustain from the inside.
Shamayne Brown is a virtual assistant and the founder of Camp Virtual Assistance.
She works with busy executives and solo professionals who are ready to invest in their business and need the support that she offers.
She specializes in creating email newsletters as well as other admin and creative design tasks.
Click here to connect on LinkedIn.
Click here to set up a discovery call.
