I did something very out of character last week:
I took Friday and Saturday off.
And I mean OFF.
No checking emails (left the phone in the room from 10-6 daily). No debriefing conversations. No mapping the coming week. No trying to “maximize” downtime by turning brunch into a strategy session.
I hung out with my best friends in Palm Springs. That was it.
No squeezing more in. No optimization. No productivity cosplay disguised as relaxation.
I subtracted.
Which is also why this is Wednesday and there was no Monday SELLING THE TRUTH TODAY article this week. (!)
And there won’t be a Friday one either. (!!)
This is the only article I’m publishing this week.
A younger, more caffeinated version of me would’ve interpreted that as slacking.
Or inconsistency. Or “losing momentum.”
But lately I’ve been noticing something interesting in both business and branding:
Sometimes the issue isn’t what’s missing. It’s what’s accumulated.
Too many:
- messages,
- offers,
- platforms,
- explanations,
- obligations,
- conversations,
- collaborations,
- and half-aligned opportunities quietly pulling the signal out of focus.
So the instinct becomes: add another system.
Another funnel.
Another content stream.
Another visibility play.
Another thing to maintain.
Meanwhile the original clarity starts suffocating under the weight of constant expansion.
I’ve done this too.
Sometimes what looks like growth is really just expanded maintenance.
More things to feed.
More things to explain.
More things to sustain.
More noise pretending to be momentum.
And ironically, the clearer my work has become around interpretation and coherence, the more I’ve realized subtraction is often the real strategic move.
Not disappearing.
Not “doing less” as some performative life hack.
Just removing what creates distortion.
Conversations that go nowhere.
Visibility that amplifies the wrong signal.
Opportunities that require fragmentation to sustain.
Content that sounds productive but says nothing.
Relationships built more on access than reciprocity.
Cleaner by subtraction.
That phrase hit me this week because some of the strongest shifts happening in my business right now aren’t coming from adding new complexity.
They’re coming from:
- clearer positioning,
- fewer but better conversations,
- stronger alignment,
- sharper discernment,
- and finally trusting that not every open loop deserves continued energy.
Authority doesn’t necessarily strengthen through expansion.
Sometimes it strengthens through elimination.
Not louder. Clearer.
Not more. More coherent.
And honestly? Palm Springs helped.
Not because I had some giant revelation floating on a flamingo raft holding a margarita.
Although that would’ve been excellent content.
It helped because I stopped feeding the machine for 48 hours and realized the machine didn’t collapse.
In fact, when I came back, I could see more clearly what actually mattered.
That’s usually the signal.
-Hersh