Growth, Margin, and Playing the Long Game | 3 Things I’m Focusing on as I Turn 33
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This is a very special week as Victoria is turning 33 and the podcast is turning 5! In this special birthday episode, Victoria gets real about turning 33 and the reflections that come with stepping into a new season of life and business. After five years of juggling motherhood, entrepreneurship, and building BrandWell into a thriving design agency, she shares how shifting gears toward a boutique, higher-touch business model has brought both clarity and growing pains. The changes may feel uncomfortable at times, but Victoria opens up about why she sees this season as a sign of meaningful growth.
As she looks ahead, Victoria shares the three main areas she’s choosing to focus on this year: getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, creating better organization for her calendar and her mind, and building BrandWell with a long-term vision. From hiring her first business mentor and surrounding herself with women further ahead, to creating more margin in her daily routines and finally building a CEO dashboard to organize big-picture ideas, she’s leaning into the discomfort of change while also setting herself up for greater clarity and peace.
Victoria also reflects on how her mindset has shifted since her 20s, from chasing hustle and quick wins to embracing the slow, steady, and meaningful work of creating a legacy brand. With honesty and vulnerability, she shares how she’s learning to measure success less by monthly sales and more by profitability, sustainability, and consistency over time. Whether you’re in a season of hustle, growth, or reflection, this episode will inspire you to pause, take inventory, and start planting the seeds for your own long game.
Reflecting on the Past to Plan for Growth
This week is Victoria’s birthday! Each year around her birthday, she tends to get reflective and takes inventory on what the previous year held and what she’s really wanting to get out of this next year. So much over the last five years has felt like a season of change. She’s had three kids and she’s grown BrandWell from a side hustle to a half a million dollar design agency within the same time frame. However, this year, turning 33 has felt profound to Victoria as she may be on the brink to her new “normal”.
Growing Pains in Business
Since this year began, Victoria has been experiencing growing pains with BrandWell. Last December, they made a decision as a team to shift the direction of BrandWell to head more towards being a boutique bespoke design agency with a smaller team of designers. This decision led them to rebrand the company, update their website, and then beginning in 2025, they significantly increased their prices.
There was expectations that their leads would dip, and they did, but this price increase also allowed Victoria to streamline her team and keep it smaller. What Victoria did not expect was the leads to be cut in half, and honestly, she has been really uncomfortable with the lower volume. While she fully believes this was what was needed to happen for BrandWell, she’s now having to navigate with the repercussions, and this feels really uncomfortable.
Getting Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Getting comfortable being uncomfortable is the first point that Victoria is trying to focus on in her 33rd year. One of the biggest lessons that she’s learned in her adult life thus far is that growth doesn’t ever feel easy. It feels awkward, sometimes it’s embarrassing, and at the end of the day, it’s just uncomfortable. At Squarespace’s Circle Day, one of the speakers actually was talking about this exact topic and he said that “Imposter syndrome gets bad PR, it’s proof that you’re growing”. At 33, Victoria is making peace with discomfort and choosing to see it as proof that she’s not failing, she’s just moving forward.
Here’s some practical ways that Victoria is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable:
In the seven years of having BrandWell, Victoria has never hired a business coach, but that has changed as she is now working with Jessica Marx and her team at Tailored Premier. They are auditing her business and writing strategy for recommendations on how to move forward, and in order to do this, they are putting a magnifying glass on every single detail of Victoria’s business over the last five years.
Another example is that Victoria is choosing to surround herself with people who are a bit further ahead of her, in both personal life and business. She has mom friends who have children that are older than Victoria’s girls so that she can learn from them and kind of be prepared for what to expect as her girls get to that age. Same thing goes for business, Victoria is surrounding herself with business owners who are 10 steps ahead of her so that they can give pointers and provide advice as she continues to grow BrandWell. Even though this may feel intimidating, it will stretch you and help you grow.
Organized Calendar = Organized Mind
The second point that Victoria is focusing on this year is organizing her calendar more efficiently so that she can organize her mind. This point may be more personal than business, but it will certainly impact both. While she can’t control the season of life she’s in, she can control the margin that she gives herself, to an extent. For example, leaving earlier to pick up her oldest daughter from school, instead of always rushing to make it there on-time, which only causes anxious behavior or even frustration. Now, Victoria leaves fifteen minutes early and she arrives calmer and has the ability to use those extra minutes as a way to fill up her cup. When it comes to business, creating more margin looks like creating a space for her CEO ideas to live rather than just keeping them all to herself in her brain. By doing this, it’ll be clear for Victoria to see these ideas and then actually delegate them out to her team.
Building For the Long Game
The last point that is being focused on is building for the long game. In Victoria’s 20’s, she was all about the hustle. Now that she’s in her 30’s, she’s realizing that the most meaningful work for her is actually a lot more slow and steady. This does not negate her season of hustle, but rather, she is here because of her season of hustle.
Victoria is working on building systems, processes, and a team that can sustain BrandWell without her, and while this has always been a goal of hers, her perspective has changed to focus more on thinking in decades rather than just in terms of quarters. Building for the long game in business looks like trading urgency for consistency. It’s about those little day-to-day decisions, and often, those are not the things that give you instant dopamine hits, but they are the things that help you create a legacy brand.
This year, Victoria is asking herself less of what she can get done today, and more of what seeds she can plant that will grow into something meaningful years from now.
Celebrate Victoria’s Birthday!
Thank you so much for celebrating Victoria’s birthday with us! If you’d be so kind as to leave her a review on Apple, it would mean so much to her! She reads every single one and they really do help the show! You can also always text the show using the link in your favorite podcasting platform! No matter what way, Victoria always loves hearing from you!
Key Quotes
“One of the biggest lessons that I've learned in my adult life so far is that growth doesn't ever feel easy.”
Victoria Marcouillier
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