This is about the peculiar problem of having too many good ideas. Not too few. Too many. And why letting some of them stay exactly as they are, ideas, or hobbies, rather than folding every single one into the business, might be one of the most quietly confident things you can do.
Because if you’re anything like the creatives I work with, you don’t have a shortage of ideas. You have a notebook full of them. You’re good at what you do, you’ve built something real, and part of what got you here is that you’re endlessly curious and endlessly capable. You see possibility everywhere. Directions you could take, offerings you could add, whole other businesses you can almost picture.
And that really is a wonderful position to be in. It’s a sign of how much is there.
But it comes with a particular challenge, and it’s one I see all the time. Every so often, one of those ideas gets so exciting, and you’re so clearly capable of pulling it off, that you start to think, maybe this should be part of the business too. Maybe I should offer this as well. And because it’s exciting, and because saying yes to more feels like the ambitious thing to do, in it comes.
I understand the pull completely. When you’re capable of doing many things well, choosing just one can feel almost like a loss. Like you’re leaving something on the table.
But what so often happens is that it quietly blurs everything. Because each new thing you fold in asks the people you’re hoping to reach to hold a little more in their heads about who you are and what you do. And when someone can’t quite tell, at a glance, what you’re really known for, they don’t stop to piece it together. They simply drift on. The one clear thread you’d been building, the thing that was starting to make you unmistakable, goes gently out of focus.
So it isn’t that you’re doing too much. You’re more than capable of doing a great deal. It’s that adding everything in works against the one thing that makes the biggest difference of all, being known, clearly and distinctly, for one thing.
And this is the part I most want to say, because I think it’s where the relief is. Being known for one thing does not mean only ever doing one thing.
It doesn’t mean giving up your other loves, or shrinking your world down to a single narrow lane. Being multi-talented and curious is a gift, and you get to keep all of it. It simply means having one clear thread that people recognise you for, one thing they can hold in mind and describe to a friend in a sentence. And then everything else has a choice about where it sits. Some of it sits underneath that thread, deepening it. And some of it gets to simply stay a joy on the side. An idea you explore for the pleasure of it. A hobby that never has to earn its keep.
Because not every good idea is asking to become part of the business. Some of them are asking to just be yours. Something you make on a Sunday, with no client, no positioning, no pressure for it to perform. And there’s something quite restorative in keeping a creative outlet that exists purely for the love of it. Very often, it’s the exact thing that keeps you fresh for the work you’re actually known for.
I want to be really clear, too, that letting an idea stay an idea is not the same as playing small. It’s the opposite. Choosing what to say no to, so the one thing can be brilliant, is one of the most confident decisions you can make. The businesses you most admire, the ones you could describe in a single line, didn’t get there by doing everything they were capable of. They got there by being wonderfully clear about the one thing, and letting a great deal of other good, possible things simply go, or wait, or stay a private pleasure.
So the next time an exciting new idea comes knocking, and with you, it will, you don’t have to fold it in to honour it. You can let it deepen the one thing, if it truly belongs there. Or you can let it stay exactly what it is. An idea. A hobby. A pleasure. A part of your life that never has to become a part of your livelihood.
Comments +