Where I've Been
Hint: It's Exactly Where I Should Be
Welcome back to Scaling With Soul!
It's been more than a month since my last post. Office hours have been on pause. My TikTok — my main platform for more than two years — also went dark (I just posted there for the first time in a month). There's a reason, and it's the right one.
ExecutiveIQ is launched and it’s working.
We’ve onboarded three enterprise customers with multiple users each, and I am moving heaven and earth to make sure those customers are happy and getting everything they need. We’re not at the headcount where I can hand everything off — and honestly, I don’t want to. Doing the work myself means I feel every little friction point in our product. I know exactly what’s slowing my team and my customers down, exactly what to prioritize next with our developers, exactly how to make our small team more productive. You can’t outsource that kind of clarity, especially not this early.
So something had to give. Substack, office hours and TikTok? On hold.
What didn’t give: LinkedIn and our brand-new EIQ blog. That’s where our customers actually are, and that content — along with our brand-new website (just launched on Friday, another thing checked off the list) — is what’s going to surface us in AI searches. We cannot win without it. So that’s where my limited content energy is going right now.
Different phases of a startup hit different. The phase I’m in right now is the one where you protect your focus like it’s the company’s most valuable asset — because it is. Early enterprise traction is fragile. You either show up for those customers and your team or you don’t, and I am 1000% committed to showing up.
I’ll be back. The newsletter isn’t going anywhere, and neither is my commitment to founders and entrepreneurs. But for now, if you’re reading this and wondering whether you should be writing more, posting more, showing up to more things — ask yourself what phase you’re in. And then ask which channels actually move the needle for this phase. Sometimes the most disciplined move is the one that looks like silence from the outside.
It isn’t silence. It’s traction.
More soon.
Follow My Journey Building My Fourth Company
I have created a playlist on TikTok to document my latest startup journey. Tune in to follow along.
Ask Me Anything: Got a burning question about building or scaling your business? Drop me a line at skgillenwater@gmail.com. I personally read every email and respond to as many as possible. The most interesting questions might be featured in future issues (with your permission, of course). No question is too basic or too complex—I'm here to help you succeed!