Hello {{first name | friend}},
You know what's funny about rock bottom? Sometimes you reach it in the most ironic places.
My first "I fucking hate it here" moment happened in Palm Springs, a literal desert masquerading as paradise. Now I'm having another one in the business desert I've been wandering through.
Last week, I was seeing red, both on my P&L and in my anger. I watched (again) as someone selling recycled advice and AI-generated slop made more in a month than I have all year. And I've showed up consistently.
For what?
My friend Sabine Gedeon nailed it during her Cultivating Connections Challenge, I'm a Type-A goal setter who plans everything, sets unrealistically ambitious targets, and hides behind my systems and ye ol' "busy badge."
But here's what I've realized: I'm playing someone else's game.
My friend Jessica Lackey calls this the entrepreneurial casino in her new book, Leaving the Casino: Stop Betting on Tactics and Start Building a Business that Works. It's the multi-billion dollar industry built on selling business owners promises of quick and easy success. Most of that advice leads you straight toward someone else's vision: performative marketing, overbuilt systems, hustle culture disguised as "discipline," and a business that looks impressive on paper but feels hollow in practice.
In 2026, I'm leaving the casino, and possibly tossing everything right out the fucking window.
This isn't about having a perfect plan (shocking, I know). This is about recognizing that if you're hustling yourself into exhaustion while struggling to make sales, and you also fucking hate it here, you're not alone.
As Jessica points out, the answer isn't that we're doing something wrong. It's that we've been playing a rigged game.
BET ON YOURSELF
Ready to stop betting on tactics and start building a business that works for you? Here's your 2026 reclaimation plan:
1. Audit Your "Busy Badge" Activities
Take inventory of everything you're doing in your business right now. For each activity, ask:
Does this directly lead to revenue?
Does this feel aligned with my values?
Am I doing this because I genuinely believe in it, or because some guru said I had to?
Action step: Create a "Keep, Kill, Delegate" list. Be ruthless. If you've posted five days a week on social this year with minimal ROI, maybe social selling isn't your channel. That's not failure, it's data.
2. Identify Your Bets
What tactics are you employing because "everyone says you should"? Common casino bets include:
Posting daily on social media platforms you hate
Chasing every new platform or trend
Overcomplicating your offer suite
Investing in courses that promise "the secret"
Action step: Pick your top 3 bets and put them on a 90-day pause. See what happens. (Spoiler: Probably nothing bad.)
3. Reclaim Your Unique Positioning
You know what makes you different? It's probably the thing you've been hiding because it doesn't fit the "professional" mold.
Maybe it's your unfiltered opinions. Your weird sense of humor. Your unconventional background. Your "unhinged" moments of raw honesty.
Action step: Write down 5 things that make you weird or different in your industry. Now build your 2026 messaging around those things instead of hiding them.
4. Strip Down to Your Essentials
What if you could only offer one thing in 2026? What would it be? Now, what if you could only market in one way? What would feel sustainable?
Action step: Design a "minimum viable business" for 2026. One core offer. One primary marketing channel. One simple sales process. Once that's profitable and sustainable, then (and only then) consider adding complexity back in.
5. Follow Your Energy, Not Your Plan
Type-A brain’s won't love this, but: what if you spent Q1 2026 doing only the business activities that energize you? Not the "should dos,” the "want to dos."
Action step: Track your energy levels after every business activity for two weeks. Note what lights you up versus what drains you. Then build your business model around maximizing the former and eliminating or delegating the latter.
6. Design for Seasons, Not Sprints
The business bros wants you to believe you need to be "on" 365 days a year. But what if your business had seasons, times of growth, times of harvest, times of rest?
Action step: Map out a seasonal business model for 2026. When will you launch? When will you deliver? When will you go dark and recharge? Build revenue goals that account for intentional off-seasons instead of demanding year-round hustle.
7. Find Your Fellow Defectors
The “casino” keeps you playing by isolating you, making you believe everyone else is winning while you're struggling. They're not. They're just better at the performance.
Action step: Reach out to 3-5 business owners you admire and respect (not just envy). Have honest conversations about what's really working and what's theater. Build a support system based on truth, not highlight reels.
8. Set Boundaries with the Guru Industrial Complex
Unsubscribe. Unfollow. Unfriend if necessary. The gurus selling you the dream are making money whether you succeed or not, that's their business model.
Action step: Do a radical digital declutter. Remove yourself from every email list, group, or feed that makes you feel "less than" or triggers FOMO. Replace that space with content that inspires without selling you something.
9. Redefine What Success Looks Like
Maybe success isn't six figures. Maybe it's having Tuesday afternoons free. Maybe it's working with 10 dream clients instead of 100 okay ones. Maybe it's being able to say "I fucking hate it here" when something isn't working and actually change it.
Action step: Write your own success definition for 2026. Make it specific, personal, and utterly divorced from what the internet thinks you should want.
If you're brilliant, struggling, and also fucking hate it here, I see you. A lot of women in business see you.
It's time we stopped betting on other people's tactics and started building businesses that actually work for us. Not for the algorithm. Not for the guru. Not for the highlight reel.
2026 is the year we leave the casino.
Who's coming with me?
P.S. Want to dive deeper into leaving the casino? Jessica Lackey's book, Leaving the Casino: Stop Betting on Tactics and Start Building a Business that Works, is your roadmap out. Get it, HERE!
HOW TO WORK WITH ME
👯♀️ Join the Women Startup NC community of women supporting the startup, owner, founder, and supporter ecosystem in North Carolina.
🎧 Tune into the Hacking the Patriarchy podcast. *Bonus: love it? Consider leaving me a review.
💌 Subscribe to my other newsletter, Fem-Led News, where I even further amplify women's achievements through stories, strategies, and role models.
👊 Become a partner and co-create bold, values-aligned campaigns that connect, convert, and make an impact.
⚡ Book a 1:1 virtual business coaching session with me. Choose a transformative stroll & strategize session during my daily walk, or a 60-minute power hour session. In either option, we'll tackle your business challenges, gain clarity, and develop actionable strategies.
☕ Fuel my work! Enjoy my content but not ready for a long-term commitment? Show your support by buying me a coffee, a simple, one-time way to keep the ideas brewing!
