Episode 330: How to Build a Business That Supports Your Life with Erin Bradley
What It Really Takes to Build a Business That Supports Your Life
Here’s a story I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. It’s July. You’ve just ridden your bike five miles across town to meet a potential client — because you don’t have gas money — and you’ve arrived early, so the sweat dries before he gets there. He walks in. You step up to the counter. Your credit card gets declined for a $2 cup of coffee. You keep your face completely neutral, tell him it’s your debit card, and say you’ll call the bank later. He buys your coffee. You walk out with your dignity barely intact and absolutely nothing else.
That was Erin Bradley in 2008. She was working 100% commission, maxed out on credit card debt, and building a business on pure grit and zero safety net. And somehow, she kept going — not because she had all the answers, but because her dad asked her one question when she called him afterward: do you think you’re going to be good at this someday? She said yes. He said, "Then you do whatever it takes."
Today, Erin is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, coach, and the host of the globally ranked Pursuing Freedom Podcast. What got her from that coffee counter to where she is now is exactly what this episode is about. And honestly? It has very little to do with the actions she took.
On the Game On Girlfriend® podcast, I talk every week with women entrepreneurs about what it actually takes to build businesses that work — not just on paper, but for your real life. This conversation with Erin is one of those episodes that will meet you exactly where you are in your business. Whether you’re just starting out or already successful and somehow still exhausted, there’s something here for you.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why taking action from desperation produces completely different results than taking action from a place of genuine value
- Why women have been conditioned to give from empty wells — and what actually happens when you stop doing that
- How Erin used subtraction, not addition, to go from two closings a month to seventeen
- What making decisions with fear along for the ride actually looks like in practice
Watch the full episode
The Trap of Action Without Energy
When Erin opened another credit card and hired her first business coach in 2008, she was in full survival mode. She told the coach, "Just tell me what to do." So he did. She made the calls, wrote the notes, and showed up for every meeting. The business began to move forward. But something still felt completely wrong.
“I feel like I was trying to slap an action plan on top of a low mindset of desperation.” — Erin Bradley
She was closing deals. She was following the plan. Still, she kept wondering if she was just not cut out for this — because the strategies she was being given didn’t feel like hers, and the energy behind all of it felt like she was constantly running from something instead of toward something.
Everything shifted in 2011 when she read The Go-Giver. The book introduced her to a completely different way of operating: instead of leading with what she needed to get, she started asking how she could be genuinely useful — even when someone didn’t need her services right now. As a mortgage professional, her clients only needed her every couple of years. So she built a strategy around being their connector for everything else — financial services, health, wellness, you name it. By 2012, the business had more than doubled.
The strategy helped. But the real shift was in the starting point — and that made all the difference.
What It Means to Lead from Joy Instead of Lack
The go-getter model, as Erin describes it, starts from a deficit. You have a problem to solve, so you take action, and you tell yourself that once you get the result, you’ll finally have permission to feel at ease. The goalpost keeps moving, though. So the ease never quite arrives.
The go-giver model starts from an entirely different question.
“What if joy was the compass? What if I could have a little fun with this today?” — Erin Bradley
When your motivator shifts from “I need this outcome” to “how can I actually be useful to you today,” the energy of every interaction changes. People feel that — in your emails, your posts, your phone calls. Both approaches can lead to the same external result. The difference lies in how you feel throughout and how the people you’re trying to serve feel around you.
You Cannot Give What You Don’t Have
This next part of the conversation is one I think every woman entrepreneur needs to hear. Women aren’t just prone to giving from empty wells. We’ve been actively conditioned to do it. The drive to serve, to care for everyone around us, to show up even at the point of our own depletion — that has been shaped into us over generations. We’ve been taught to call it dedication. Erin calls it something else entirely.
“If you could really prioritize filling your well first to the point of overflow, you would become more available for everything that is possible.” — Erin Bradley
She describes it as the difference between a dim flame and a lighthouse. When the light inside you is barely on, you’re managing. When you’ve figured out what actually ignites you and you walk into your day from that place, something shifts — in how people experience you, in what becomes available, and in what you can genuinely give.
So often, though, we’re waiting for an outcome from the outside world to turn that flame on for us. A result. A validation. A certain number in the bank account. Erin’s point is simple and worth sitting with:
“We’re waiting for permission or approval or an outcome from the outside world to turn that flame on within us. But really we hold the match.” — Erin Bradley
She Was the Bottleneck — and Didn’t Know It
By 2014, Erin had built something genuinely impressive. She was also becoming a shell of herself.
She was making more money than she’d ever thought possible. At the same time, she was miserable — tethered to her phone around the clock, with a toddler at home and a second baby on the way. She went to a company holiday dinner, visibly pregnant, having closed more volume that year than ever before. And she came home and told her husband she didn’t know if she was cut out for this.
The women ahead of her in the business were doing even more volume. They were also working until midnight after their kids were in bed. That was the path.
A mentor gave her the advice that changed everything: "You need to do less and a lot less, Erin, in order to do any more.”
“Usually in order to expand, we need to subtract.” — Erin Bradley
Her first hire was one of her best friends. Her second was her nanny, after two and a half years of working together. Then her next-door neighbor. She jokes that she was dragging bodies onto a speeding train.
In the summer of 2014, she brought on her first team member — and within 90 days, the business dried up. Two closings a month. For someone paying commission to a new hire, that was a reckoning. She decided: September was going to be about reengaging with her community and having some fun with it.
Within four months, she went from two closings a month to twelve. By March 2015, they had seventeen closings in a single month.
She had been the bottleneck. Her exhaustion, her depleted energy — that was what had been slowing everything down. The moment she got support and came back to her business with more of herself to give, it expanded in ways that finally matched what she'd come to entrepreneurship for in the first place.
Making Decisions with Fear Along for the Ride
One of the most practically useful pieces of this entire conversation is also the most freeing. Erin is not here to tell you that one day you'll stop being afraid. She's here to tell you that waiting to be fearless is not a real strategy — because fearlessness is not a real destination.
"Making decisions with fear along for the ride, instead of waiting to be fearless, which isn't a thing anyway." — Erin Bradley
In 2019, she fired herself from client-facing transaction activities — something she was convinced would put her out of business. The business nearly doubled instead. She took a six-month RV road trip during COVID, homeschooled her kids, and worked half as much as she used to. Business grew by 50%.
Every time she followed what she describes as a divine pull forward — even when every practical signal told her she was being reckless — she came out on the other side with more. Not because the fear wasn't there. Because she moved anyway.
As she said near the end of our conversation: there actually are no rules. Fear tells us specific, detailed stories about what could go wrong. But nine times out of ten, if you move in the direction your intuition is pointing — it gets better.
About Erin Bradley
Erin Bradley is a dynamic speaker, bestselling author, coach, and host of the globally ranked Pursuing Freedom Podcast. With years of experience in the real estate and entrepreneurial space, Erin helps professionals build businesses that support their life instead of consuming it. Through mindset, systems, and leverage, she teaches freedom seekers how to create sustainable success and design a life they don't need a vacation from.
Connect with Erin
- Facebook: Pursuing Freedom Official
- Instagram: @pursuingfreedomofficial
- YouTube: Pursuing Freedom Official
- LinkedIn: Erin Bradley
Erin's Free Resource
Happiness & Fulfillment Meter Assessment
A quick self-assessment to help you evaluate how aligned you are in life and business — designed to create awareness around fulfillment, energy, and lifestyle alignment so you can start making intentional changes toward more freedom and joy.
Listen to the Full Episode
Want to hear the complete conversation? Listen to the full episode here, or watch the video version here.
Related Episodes You’ll Love
Episode 253: Ready to Reinvent Yourself? A Conversation with Anita Rombough — Anita's work on soulful success and energy alignment speaks directly to what Erin shares about leading from a full well rather than powering through depleted. If the conversation about joy as the compass stayed with you, this episode goes even deeper. Listen here
Episode 87: Is It Ok to Be Happy Right Now? — Erin's whole philosophy comes back to one core idea: you don't have to wait for the external goals to be met before you give yourself permission to feel good. This episode makes that case in full — and it's a quick one worth keeping on repeat. Listen here
Episode 240: Overcome Societal Expectations of 'You're Not Enough' with Wellness Coach Ali Sempek — Erin talks about women being conditioned to give from empty wells — and Ali Sempek takes that same thread and follows it all the way back to where it started. Where does the belief that we're not enough come from, and how do we start to undo it? This episode answers that. Listen here
Let’s Keep This Conversation Going
Ready to build a business that actually supports your life instead of consuming it? Let's talk.
I offer free 15-minute consultation calls. We'll talk about where you are in your business and see if working together feels right.
Connect with Sarah
- Instagram: @thesarahwalton
- LinkedIn: Sarah Walton
- Free resources for you
- Join the Game On Girlfriend® community — subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube
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About Sarah Walton
Sarah Walton is a business coach and the host of the Game On Girlfriend® podcast. Her mission is simple: to put more money in the hands of more women. She helps women entrepreneurs build profitable, sustainable businesses without burnout — working through both the mindset and the strategy sides of growth. Because when women have more financial power, they don’t just keep it — they use it to take care of their families, support their communities, and build something bigger than themselves. Through her programs — including the Abundance Academy and The Art of Receiving — along with her online courses and one-on-one coaching, Sarah works with women who are ready to build profitable businesses and use that financial power to make a real difference in the world around them.
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