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Farmers Never Hurry: Michelle MacNeil on Building a Business That Lasts
Description
What happens when you get everything right on paper... and still feel like you are running on fumes?
Michelle MacNeil is a Systems Business Coach® running her practice from a small hobby farm in rural Alberta, Canada. She works with small business owners who are doing well by most traditional measures: billing is solid, clients are happy, and on paper things look fine. But “are too successful to quit and too exhausted” to actually enjoy what they have built.
Her take: it is not an ambition problem. It is an infrastructure problem. And those, she will tell you, are her favorite kind of problem to fix.
In this conversation, Michelle talks about what it actually means to fail forward (not the poster version), why building your business on the leftovers of your day guarantees you will stay stuck, and how quarterly planning changed the way she shows up for both her business and her farm.
We also get into the hard question: if you are going to build yourself a really crappy job, why are you doing this at all?
This one is for you if you are showing up every day, giving it everything, and still wondering why you feel like you are behind.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Welcome to the Scenic Route: Introducing Michelle MacNeil
01:17 Too Successful to Quit but Too Exhausted to Enjoy It: Who Michelle Works With
02:55 Where Did You Think Your Life Was Going? Michelle's Non-Linear Path
04:30 Baby, Puppies, COVID, and a Farm: How the Big Life Shift Happened
09:40 How Running a Farm Taught Her to Work Differently With Clients
14:26 Why Every Coach Needs a Coach: The Problem With Being Too Close
15:17 Failing Forward Was Just a Poster Until the Farm Taught Her What It Actually Means
19:15 Farmers Never Hurry: The Pace Strategy Her Neighbors Taught Her
22:28 If One Hiccup Derails Your Plan, Your Plan Is Too Thin
24:15 Business Lessons From Turkeys and Non-Negotiables
29:23 Stop Building Your Business on the Leftovers of Your Day
31:26 Why Annual Goals Fail and Quarterly Planning Works
35:29 Co-Planning: Why You Actually Show Up When You Do It With Others
40:01 Business Development Is Personal Development: You Can't Have One Without the Other
41:07 Where to Find Michelle and Join the Quarterly Planning Session
MICHELLE MACNEIL
Q3 2026 Quarterly Planning Session (FREE on June 29th): Register here
ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Steward helps senior corporate women stop saying ‘just one more year’ and finally understand what leaving would actually take. She knows the gap between the numbers looking fine and the feeling being anything but: she left the Navy with more than most people’s ‘enough’ in the bank, and her anxiety got worse. Now she helps women build the financial clarity and self-trust to leave corporate on their own terms, their own timing, their own scenic route.
Financial Empowerment Coach | Certified Profit for Keeps® Coach