Who carried your October?
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Welcome to Joyful Ambition. Every Thursday, this letter is our session: one idea you can implement, from a three-time founder with 18+ years of entrepreneurship and $280M+ in client results, for women entrepreneurs who run expert and service-based businesses.
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Hi Visionary,
Let me tell you about the trick I fell for the longest.
I spent the first decade of my career in commercial real estate, sometimes the only woman at the table and, in many rooms, the only Black professional. I learned early what that seat required: listen more than you speak, be twice as good, work twice as hard, and let nobody see you tired. The women I came from had survived on that exact rule, so I took it as the price of ambition and carried it into every deal, and later into my own business.
The trick is simple, which is why it works. The more you can carry, the more useful you are. The more useful you are, the more needed you become, and the further you get from ever being anyone's burden. For women, and for women of color most of all, that rule gets handed to us early, and we get rewarded every time we follow it.
I was paid for carrying. I was praised for it, and introduced by it. Perhaps you've heard it too: "you're the glue that makes this work or your work is the bedrock of our success; I have no idea how we would get ALL of this done without you." It took me years, and a business of my own, to see what the trick was costing me and believe me, there was absolutely no treat to be found.
This month we have been taking it apart, one piece of help at a time.
Strength, the way I was taught it, was how much I could carry alone.
Capacity, the way I live it now, is how much gets carried for me, and what I choose to do with the hours that come back.
What October Took Off Your Desk
Four letters, four ways to let someone or something else carry the work.
We started by letting their version go out, even when it felt like eighty percent to you. A week later, you sorted one day into two piles, execution and judgment. Mid-month, I told you why I built GINA and asked you to bring the full picture to your judgment. And last week we took it home, to the help you are allowed to buy, trade or borrow for the work that keeps a house running.
If you did any one of those, something carried work for you this month. If you read all four letters and have yet to change a thing, you still did the first part, which is seeing where the work sits. Seeing it always comes before handing it off, so you are further along than you think.
Help that works well leaves almost no trace on your calendar.
That is exactly why it is so easy to overlook.
Count What Carried It
Most of us keep a careful count of what we did. The count of what was done for us rarely gets written down anywhere.
See whether any of these happened in your October:
The grocery order arrived at your door while you were on a client Zoom.
The contractor sent the invoice reminders you used to chase yourself at night.
The AI draft took you ten minutes to edit instead of an hour to write.
None of those shows up on your list as something you did, so they fall out of the tally. Then Friday evening comes, you add up the week, and that familiar tightness settles across your shoulders, the one that says it still fell short.
That tally is missing a column. Count what carried the work and the month looks very different, because you built the business that pays for that help, and you chose who and what gets to carry it. Every item in that column is a decision you made well.
The list also gets you somewhere. A written record of what already carried work for you makes the next handoff easier, because you have proof it worked.
What carried your work this month is evidence of the capacity you have already built.
Where the Hours Went
This summer, Ipsos surveyed 750 small business owners for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Among owners who said AI had sped up or improved their employees' work, 65% said that saved time went into more or higher-quality work. 30% said some of it went to breaks and personal tasks.
Those owners were describing their teams, and most of us run the same pattern on ourselves. An hour comes back and the relief lasts about as long as a hot cup of coffee, then the hour fills with whatever was waiting next on the list.
That is the moment I come back to a line I say often to women in my community:
We're building this business to support your life.
Help that only buys you more work keeps the business growing and leaves your life exactly where it was. Most months, I take a week off for rest, deep work or travel. Those weeks exist because a team, contractors and systems keep things moving while I am away. The help creates the time, and I still choose, every month, what that time is for.
After 18+ years of entrepreneurship and $280M+ in client results, the measure I trust most for a business is whether it gives its owner a life she wants to come home to.
Abundance, the last of the 5 A's of Joyful Ambition, begins with receiving. This month you practiced receiving help. The hours it hands back are yours to receive too, and rest is a complete answer for what they are for.
Two Columns
Open a note on your phone or grab a sheet of paper and draw two columns. In the first, write one thing that carried work for you in October: a person, a tool, a service, a system. In the second, write what you did with the time it handed back.
If the second column comes up blank, that tells you something useful. For many of us in the U.S., the clocks fall back early Sunday morning, and that free hour makes a good first entry. Give it a job before it arrives, whether that is a long walk, a slow breakfast with someone you love, or an hour on the work only you can do.
If two columns feels like too much this week, fill in the first one only. Naming what carried you is the half most of us skip, and it is enough to start.
Every hour help hands back to you deserves a destination you chose.
A month-end baseline will show you where that time is going. The Elevation Assessment covers four domains (Identity, Revenue, Sovereignty and Capacity) in a short online quiz of multiple-choice and reflection prompts. It takes under ten minutes, and your scores appear the moment you finish.
Take the Elevation Assessment
Look at all four scores side by side this time. October was about Capacity, and Capacity makes the most sense next to the other three, because it shows whether the help you received is feeding the rest of your life or simply feeding more work.
What Carried Your October?
Something carried part of your work this month, whether it was a person, a tool or a delivery at your door. Counting it, and choosing what the hours it gave back are for, is how help becomes a life you enjoy living.
Hit reply and tell me one thing that carried your work in October, and what you did with the time it gave you. If you are open to me sharing your answer without your name, add a line saying so. I read every response.
To your continued success,
What I'm Excited About
We Voted Early, the Way We Always Do
Every election, midterms or presidential, my husband and I make a date of it and go vote early. Neither of us likes crowds or lines, so we always get there ahead of them. This year that date was yesterday.
Whatever the political climate, I am grateful that as a woman, and as a Black woman, I get to vote, and I use that right every chance I get. If you are in the U.S., please take a moment and please remember to vote.
You Voted on GINA, Too
So many of you accepted your invitation to GINA that she has become a hot ticket, and I am so happy to see it. If you have been meaning to take yours, it is still waiting for you, with seven days free.
The Joyful Ambition Bookshelf
Featured this week: Drop the Ball by Tiffany Dufu. Dufu was raised to carry all of it, and this is her account of setting most of it down: at work, at home, and in her own expectations of herself. If the first column in this week's move is hard to fill, start here.
Also on the shelf: Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. The idea is sound: ask who can do this before you ask how to do it yourself. The irony is that two men wrote the book on a habit most of us were raised without, since men have had people carrying work for them for as long as there has been work. Read it anyway. Reading Dufu first makes the second book easier to put into practice.
The books I keep coming back to and always recommend: Books That Built Me
Bianca B. King
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Instagram: @iambiancabking · @pdambitious
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