The Business I Thought I Wanted—and the Life I Actually Want

Mirza Veljkovic

Aug 28

8 min read

You know those mornings when you just don't want to get out of bed?

This morning was one of those mornings for me.

I'm not sad. I'm tired, yes—I stayed up until almost two in the morning working on a sewing project—but lack of sleep isn't really what's making me feel slow today.

I think I just needed to be still.

Lately, I've been taking Fridays a little easier. I usually don't go into the office, and if I work, I work only a few hours.

Some of my days are packed from beginning to end with projects, responsibilities, phone calls, meetings, emails and problems that need solving. Other days aren't quite as demanding.

But somewhere along the journey of owning a business, I learned that I needed at least one day when I wasn't simply reacting.

A day to look at the week.
What were my wins?
What did I learn?
Am I still going where I said I wanted to go?

And perhaps the more uncomfortable question:

👉🏼 Do I even still want to go there?

The Dream I Started With

I'm approaching five years in business.

When I started, my vision was enormous.

I had ambition, ideas, inspiration and what felt like a galaxy-wide vision for what this company could become.

I lived and breathed my business.

I wanted to grow it as far and as big as I could possibly imagine.

So I invested.

Money. Time. Software. Coaches. Books. Courses. Systems.

I created processes, platforms, frameworks, training manuals, templates and procedures. I wanted to build something BIG.

And then something happened that entrepreneurs are told we're supposed to want:

The business grew!

It grew quickly.

And growth is a good thing.

Except I eventually had to admit something to myself:

I wasn't ready for it.

More importantly, looking back now, I'm not sure that the life attached to that kind of growth was ever the life I truly wanted.

I was running on enthusiasm. I wanted every client to be happy. I wanted to solve every problem. I wanted to say yes.

So I did.

Yes to the projects.
Yes to the clients.
Yes to the opportunities.
Yes to growth.

Yes, yes, yes.

Until eventually I had bitten off far more than I could chew.

The Side of Business Ownership People Don't Always See

There are countless books, podcasts and videos telling us that entrepreneurship isn't for the faint of heart.

They're right.

Being your own boss sounds wonderfully freeing—and in many ways, it is.

But nobody makes you show up.
You have to create the discipline.
You find the clients.
You generate the revenue.
You solve the problems.

And there is no guaranteed direct deposit waiting for you every other Friday.

When you have employees, the responsibility becomes even greater.

There were years when I made sure everyone else received their paycheck while I didn't receive one myself.

Payroll still had to happen.
Taxes still had to be paid.
Insurance had to be maintained.
Clients had to be taken care of.
Problems had to be solved.

Compliance, licenses, workers' compensation, certificates of insurance, marketing, sales, human resources, cash flow—the list never really ends.

Employees go home carrying their own burdens, responsibilities and stresses. I'm certainly not minimizing that.

For business owners, there is a particular weight that comes with knowing that ultimately everything stops with you.

I hired wonderful people. 🤩
I hired people who taught me a few lessons, too. 🥺

But even there, I eventually realized something: if I made a poor hiring decision, I had to take responsibility for it.

I was the owner.
I made the decision.
That's ownership.

But the Hardest Thing Wasn't the Money

Ironically, the hardest part wasn't going without a paycheck.

The hardest thing I had to confront was my own ambition.

The very enthusiasm that helped me build the business eventually became something I needed to examine.

Because somewhere in all the growth, something inside of me wasn't right.

From the outside, I was building something successful.

Inside, I was overwhelmed.

And eventually, I reached a point where I had to stop pretending otherwise.

There is enormous pressure in business to look successful.

Especially around other entrepreneurs and successful professionals.

We talk about revenue.
Margins.
Growth.
Teams.
Systems.
Scaling (I learned to DISLIKE this word...... (cringe))
Hiring.
Expansion.

But there came a point when I didn't care about any of it anymore.

I wanted peace.

And that realization frightened me because I had spent so much time building the very thing I suddenly wasn't sure I wanted.

Then I Surrendered It

In the middle of one of the greatest periods of growth in my business, I found myself clinging to God.

I was overwhelmed.

I worried that I didn't have what was necessary to handle what I had built.

And with God, I didn't have to pretend.

I didn't have to sound successful.
I didn't have to have the answers.
I didn't have to be the CEO.
I could simply be me.

And eventually, I told God:

You can have it.

The company.
The growth.
The plans.
The ambition.
The identity I had built around being a business owner.

All of it.

Because I realized I didn't want anything badly enough that I was willing to lose my relationship with God—or myself—to have it.

I wanted God back at the center of my life.

I wanted my pursuit to be pleasing Him, not endlessly pursuing the next level.

I still wanted the business.

I just didn't want it to own me anymore.

And God answered that prayer.

Just not exactly the way I expected. 🫣

Sometimes Restoration Looks Like Dismantling

What followed was a long journey of self-discovery.

And if I'm being transparent, I didn't like a lot of what I discovered about myself.

I had to confront my pride.
My insecurity.
My need to make people happy.
My inability to say no.
My obsession with proving that I could do it.
My mistakes.
My poor decisions.
My fear.

And the uncomfortable realization that sometimes I was chasing something not because it fulfilled me, but because I thought it represented success.

Thankfully, I believe in a God who forgives and restores.

Today, my business is still here.

But it looks almost NOTHING like the business I once envisioned.

And I love it.

I Don't Want to Build an Empire Anymore

My company has become very small.

And today I can say something I probably would have been embarrassed to say a few years ago:

🚫 I don't want to scale it (did I say I DISLIKE that word now?)

I don't want a huge team.
I don't want another elaborate playbook.
I don't want to spend my life building systems so I can continually train more people to manage more growth.
I don't want to be everything to everyone.

When I reach capacity, I can say:

"I'm not accepting new clients right now."

What a concept.

No elaborate growth strategy required.

Just NO.

It took me years to understand that "no" can be one of the healthiest words in entrepreneurship.

I've also learned that I can choose the people I work with.

I can choose the projects I accept.

I can decide what enough looks like.

And perhaps most importantly:

I am allowed to change my mind about the life I want.

There Were Times I Wanted a Job

There were many times during this journey when I fantasized about simply having a job.

Show up at 8:00.
Do good work.
Clock out at 5:00.
Go home.

Collect the paycheck and let someone else worry about payroll.

Let the owner figure out taxes.

Let the owner worry about insurance, compliance, cash flow, HR, sales and whether enough money is coming in this month.

I just wanted peace.

And perhaps that is something I want employees to understand about the person who owns the company they work for.

You may see the title.

You may see the company.

You may see the revenue or the perceived freedom.

But you may not see the 2:00 a.m. worry about payroll.
The client who hasn't paid.
The tax bill.
The employee depending on you.
The lawsuit you're afraid might happen.
The project going sideways.
The customer you might lose.

The responsibility of knowing that when everyone else asks, "What are we going to do?" you're supposed to have an answer.

Sometimes you don't.

Owners are human too.

We're often doing the best we can with what we know at the time.

Just like everyone else.

Five Years Later, I'm Not the Same Woman

I am approaching the five-year mark, and the woman writing this is not the woman who started this company.

Not even close.

I don't think the same.

I'm not motivated by the same things.

I don't define success the same way.

I'm back in school. I'm learning. I'm adapting to technology. I'm developing new skills. I'm making clothes and drafting patterns at two in the morning because creativity has become an important part of my life again.

I'm still solving construction problems because, strangely enough, I genuinely enjoy them.

Give me a complicated project and apparently some part of me comes alive.

Maybe that's just how I'm wired.

But now I know something I didn't know five years ago:

My work is something I do. It isn't who I am.

Business owner is a title.

Entrepreneur is a title.

Project manager is a title.

Whatever title comes next will also just be a title.

My identity cannot live there anymore.

Maybe Pivoting Isn't Failure

We hear a lot about persistence in entrepreneurship.

Don't quit.
Keep pushing.
Work harder.
Scale.
Grow.

But perhaps we don't talk enough about the wisdom of changing direction.

Sometimes the brave decision isn't pushing harder toward the original vision.

Sometimes it's admitting:

I don't want that anymore.

That isn't necessarily failure.

Maybe you learned enough to finally understand what you actually want.

Maybe the business needs to change because you changed.

And maybe that's okay.

Whether you're an employee or a business owner, I think we all need moments when we stop reacting long enough to ask ourselves:

Where am I going?
Why am I going there?
Do I still want to go there?
What did I learn this week?
What needs to change?

And for me, most importantly:

God, is this where You want me?

What I Would Tell Someone Starting Today

Read the books.
Take the classes.
Listen to people who know more than you.
Learn everything you can.

But understand that nobody can write the story of your business for you.

At some point, you have to start.

You will make mistakes.
You will misjudge people.
You will take projects you shouldn't have taken.
You may lose clients.
You may hire the wrong people.
You may build systems you later dismantle.
You may spend money you wish you hadn't.
You may wake up one day and realize the dream changed.
Learn from it.

And stay honest with yourself.

Business decisions cannot always be driven by feelings, and discipline certainly can't depend on whether we feel motivated that morning.

But when the same feeling keeps returning, pay attention.

Ask why.

There may be something underneath it worth examining.

Today, I Have Something I Didn't Have at the Peak

Peace.

There are still problems.

There are still mistakes I need to correct.

There are loose ends and messes left behind from previous decisions.

My business isn't perfect.

Neither am I.

But strangely, I have more peace today in the middle of the mess than I had when the business looked the most successful.

And that has taught me something about success that no business book ever could.

Peace with God and peace within yourself are worth more than the appearance of success.

I would choose this peace over the empire I once imagined.

Every time.

Five years have almost come and gone.

I've learned more than I ever imagined I would—not only about business, but about people, leadership, money, responsibility, faith and myself.

I'm entering another chapter now.

I know where I want to go, although I don't know exactly how I'll get there.
I know why, even though I don't know exactly what it will look like.

And strangely, that doesn't scare me anymore.

Because this time, I know who I am.

I know what I value.

I know what "enough" looks like.

I know Who I serve.

And this time, whatever I build from here will actually look like me.

Until Next Time,

💙 Mirza