When Passion Projects Steal Your Focus

Ever watch a passion project you adore slowly crowd out the work that actually moves your business? That was me over the summer. I turned our backyard pool into a thriving swim lesson program—booked out by February, four days a week—and convinced myself it was just a seasonal shift. The truth landed when my targets slipped: the pool wasn’t the problem; my boundaries were.

I walk through the real story behind my “calling you out” moment and why it was really about calling myself back to focus. You’ll hear how a well-meaning side gig became a stealth priority, why pre-booked demand and quick wins can distort planning, and how I changed the rules to protect my core business. We get practical: hard capacity caps, pricing that respects opportunity cost, and a seasonal plan that lets a side project shine without stealing the show. I also share the weekly reset I use now—top three outcomes, immovable deep work blocks, and a simple scoreboard that shows instantly when priorities drift.

If you’ve ever told yourself “summer is slow” while watching momentum evaporate, this conversation will help you reset without burning anything down. You’ll leave with a boundary playbook to balance passion and profit, align goals with reality, and design your calendar so both your business and your creative projects can win. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs stronger boundaries, and leave a quick review—what’s one passion project you’ll structure differently this season?

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Yesterday Felt Like A Callout
• 0:25 The Pool, Guilt, And A Summer Side Gig
• 1:19 Demand Explodes And Priorities Slip
• 2:09 Loving The Work, Missing The Goals
• 3:17 Don’t Burn It Down, Set Boundaries

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Yesterday's episode made it have had a couple of you wondering where that came from, whether I was calling you out. I know I get that a lot of times from clients. You called me out in the episode, but in reality, I wasn't even really thinking of that particular client. Maybe I was thinking of another one. But the real reason for my episode yesterday was because this was a problem for me. So I have a passion project that I do over the summers. My kids are home. I know that it's difficult for me to do my work during normal work hours because I get distracted. This one needs to go here, this one needs to go there. I also, when we moved into our house five years ago, a year later we put in a beautiful pool. And I felt guilty over the fact that I was able to put in a pool into my house. So in order for me to feel less guilty, yes, there's money mindset issues here. I totally get it. You can call me out, we can do the therapy appointment separate. Okay. But in order for me to feel less guilty about putting that pool in, I decided that over the summers, I was going to offer swim lessons at my house in my pool. Because that way, for me, the pool wasn't such an extravagant thing. It was something that I needed because I was going to use it in order to make money. So my first year doing swim lessons, I did it two days a week. I did maybe three, four hours at a time. Last summer, I got people reaching out to me in February to get lessons and figure out when they could get on my schedule for May. I was booked before the end of February for the entire summer, four days a week, at four to five hours at a time, nonstop in the pool. And it was insane. And I watched my business get impacted. I left one day in my schedule where clients could get in, where I was doing all my masterminds, and I was focusing on my business. I got well ahead of myself before summer hit, before the kids were home from school with the podcast to make sure that consistent content was coming out. But my goals were not being hit for my business because my passion project was taking up so much of my time. And I allowed it to do that. And in my own mind, it was well, I'm there's an income coming in from that. Let me I love being able to be outside, enjoying the beautiful weather in North Carolina and working with little kids, teaching them how to swim. It's one of my probably favorite things. It's totally a passion project for me. I absolutely love it. But I was very frustrated with myself because I wasn't hitting my goals. And that was exactly the reason that I did the episode from yesterday. I know that some of you have passion projects, and I know that you think that I'm calling you out, but in reality, I'm calling myself out. I know how easy it is to get distracted from your goals or to make the cognizant decision to not be focused on hitting my business goals because I'm allowing my passion project to come in during my work hours and then get frustrated with myself because my business isn't hitting my goals. We need to make sure that if we're allowing this, we need to set our goals accordingly. It's fine to allow that passion project. But you have to really start to look at am I doing things that are not going to end up hurting my business or hurting my self as far as my mental capacity when it comes to my business and not getting frustrated with myself that it's a failure or it's not doing what it should be doing. You probably heard me say you never ever burn things down over June, July, or August. And the reason you heard me say that so much was because I literally had to keep telling myself that I couldn't burn things down, even though the business obviously was not doing what it should have been doing during those months because my passion project had taken over. And I kept trying to blame it on well, people are busy during June, July, and August. People to come back in September. And they do, don't get me wrong, business totally picked up as soon as kids went back to school, but they also picked up as soon as I stopped letting my passion project take over. So I tell you all this to allow you to know that I'm not calling certain people out. I want you to see that this also happens to me, and I share things because it's retrospective for me to look back and to be able to say, I need to set up different boundaries, different expectations of what my goals are going to be, or I need to set up different boundaries for my passion project and not allow it to impact my business so much. So when you are looking at your passion project, I want you to do the same thing.