The date was March 1, 2022. The first official day of high season for us. And we unanimously decided that we were not going to take any more delivery orders for the month.

Our leadership team of Real Life Company was sitting in the lobby of our hotel in Miami. We had been in town for an industry conference and were holding our weekly L10 meeting before heading to the airport. We were in the messy middle of our 91% revenue growth period, and were six months into staying within the guardrails of our new operating system. The growing pains were real, but we had our eyes on our newfound priorities.

“If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.” Damn. That hit hard when our business coach said it. And it’s obvious, right? Priority means most important, and everything can’t be the most important at the same time. But being a small business frequently means looking at a long to do list and labeling them all HIGH in priority and rolling up one’s sleeves to make it all happen. But there’s a better way.

Let’s use me in this very moment for an example. I have a task list a mile long for this little side hustle of mine. Marketing, workflow automations, bookkeeping, etc. But unless I have content, there’s nothing to market. And unless I have leads coming to me, there are no automated proposal emails needed. And unless those proposals are being signed and paid, the bookkeeping isn’t piling up. So even though those other things are important, they are not the priorities. This writing is the most important thing I can do today because it is the catalyst for everything else.

“If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.”

Back to the leadership team hanging out in Miami: prior to our trip, we’d had our quarterly planning meeting where we set our biggest goals for the next 90 days. We knew we would be in high season, and we also knew that we needed to hire, badly. We had cleaned house at the end of 2021 and were starting out with a new delivery manager and new delivery crew. So our priorities at that moment were to hire and to train. And in that moment, we knew that if we didn’t stop the influx of orders, we wouldn’t have the time to do either, or at least do them well. So we turned away business. It was hard and it felt wrong, but we were laying the foundation for improvements that would lead to the spectacular growth we experienced.

So now a thought exercise for you. What is truly a priority for you in your business, and what do you know is important, but must be set aside no matter how hard it may be? This could look like pausing new paid client work like we did so you can clean up processes or personnel in your business. It could be no new ideas or products or services for the next year so that you can fully execute on existing ones. It could be turning on your out of office responder and getting away for two weeks because your physical and mental health is the biggest priority and nothing else works without you.

Our prioritization at RLC helped us grow our gross revenue 91% in 15 months, despite turning business away in month six. Of course, priorities alone didn’t do it. Our proven process and ruthless prioritization were helped tremendously by the next step: we measured what mattered.