The Layers You Delete Still Get You There
When I first started my business, I thought I needed to learn everything.
I learnt Trello, ClickUp, Notion and quite a few other tools because I thought my clients might need them. Some were useful for a while. Others turned out to be layers I had collected because I believed that knowing more tools would make me better prepared.
Eventually, I realised I didn’t need all of them.
That could look like wasted time from the outside, but I don’t see it that way. Learning those tools helped me understand what worked for me, what my clients actually needed and what I was happy to leave behind.
We collect layers as our businesses grow
The tools are only one kind of layer.
We start services that don’t last forever. We follow ideas that lead somewhere different from where we expected. Sometimes we also carry mental or emotional layers from everything else we have experienced along the way.
Building a business isn’t a tidy journey from A to B. Mine certainly hasn’t been.
I began thinking I would offer transcription as a virtual assistant. I quickly moved into graphic design, later brought more of my artwork into the business and somehow ended up doing JSON coding and JavaScript too.
None of that would have appeared in the plan I had at the beginning.
Some parts stayed. Some changed shape. Others were deleted completely. Every layer helped me reach the next one.
Why I call it going the pretty way
The Pretty Way comes from my dad.
Whenever we went somewhere, he liked to go “the pretty way”. This usually meant we got lost, but we also saw things we would have missed on the direct route.
I remember one journey when there was an enormous amount of snow piled beside the road. My step-mum and I were in the car while dad walked up one of the snowbanks. I wasn’t very old, and I can still picture him disappearing into it.
That memory wandered into my walk while I was trying to explain deleted layers. At first, I wasn’t sure what it had to do with the subject.
Actually, it has everything to do with it.
The pretty way isn’t the most direct route. It includes wrong turns, unexpected views and stories that remain with us long after we have forgotten where we were trying to go.
Removing a layer doesn’t erase the journey
This week I had been thinking about deleted layers in my artwork.
A layer may not appear in the finished illustration, but creating it still taught me something. Perhaps I tested a brush, tried a composition or discovered that the artwork worked better without another detail competing for attention.
The same applies to business.
A service you no longer offer can still teach you what kind of work you enjoy. A system you stop using can show you what you really need. An idea that never becomes a product might lead to one that does.
Deleting the layer doesn’t remove what you learnt while creating it.
You don’t need to carry everything forward
There can be a strange pressure to keep something because we have already spent time learning it or building it.
That isn’t always a good reason to continue.
We’re allowed to decide that a tool no longer helps, an offer no longer fits or an old version of the business has taken us as far as it can. Leaving it behind doesn’t mean it was a mistake.
It means we know more now than we did when we began.
Your business may have taken the pretty way too
If you have travelled directly from your original idea to the business you have today, good on you. I suspect most of us have taken a more winding route.
We have gathered layers, experimented with them and removed the ones we no longer need. We may not have reached the place we originally imagined, but that doesn’t mean we are lost.
Sometimes the unexpected route is how we find the work that feels most like ours.
The layers you delete still get you there. They simply don’t all need to come with you.
If you enjoy honest stories about creativity, business and finding your own way, you can join Stories from the Dotty Side here: https://jodraper.au/stories-from-the-dotty-side
