Most brand founders I know are already doing a lot.

They’re researching, planning, posting, tweaking.
Shipping orders. Answering emails on repeat.
Managing people, if they have them.
Holding everything together, often quietly.

The issue usually isn’t effort.
It’s direction.

When I was building Erin’s Faces, there were stretches where I felt like I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing and still not seeing the progress I wanted.

I wasn’t lazy.
I wasn’t uncommitted.
I was working 70–80 hours a week (sound familliar?) .

But I was applying energy without a clear order of operations. I was reacting instead of being proactive.

Here’s the part no one really tells you:

Working harder doesn’t help if you’re unclear about what actually matters right now.

When everything feels important – marketing, packaging, social media, your website, pricing, inventory, content – it’s very easy to stay busy and still feel stuck.

What eventually helped me wasn’t another strategy or more advice. It was realizing I needed to focus my time differently.

Yes, you have to handle a million things every day. That doesn’t go away.
But there are moments when you have to shut the door and decide:

Is this the week I:

• dial in my email marketing?

• finally get answers from a contract manufacturer?

• commit to packaging decisions?

• survey my customers?

• write the contracts for the content creators I’m working with?

You decide on one meaningful project, and then you protect the time to work on it.

That’s very hard to do because you’re the person responsible for everything. Staff have questions. Customers have needs. Problems land on your desk.

But even choosing one morning or one afternoon this week to work on the business - not just in it - can change how everything else starts to feel.

I’m going to share more examples next week of what actually moved the needle for me as I was growing my brand, because I see this same pattern over and over again - especially with beauty founders building without a big team or a huge budget.

For now, I want to leave you with this: You don’t need to do more. You need space to decide what deserves your attention next.