Not Every Grape Makes the Reserve Blend: How to Decide What Deserves Your Best Resources

If you’ve never been around wine production, you might imagine that deciding which grapes are the “best” happens when they arrive at the winery.

The trucks roll in. The grapes get unloaded. Somebody takes a look and starts sorting.

These grapes make the reserve. Those grapes go somewhere else.

Except that’s not really how it works.

Long before harvest begins, winemakers and vineyard teams already know those vineyards. They’ve been watching the fruit develop. Walking the rows. Testing sugar levels. Tasting grapes. Tracking how different vineyard blocks are progressing.

They know which vineyards have historically produced exceptional fruit. They know what this particular growing season has delivered. They have an idea of what they want to make and which fruit has the potential to become part of it.

By the time the grapes arrive at the winery, many of the important decisions about where that fruit is headed have already been made.

And if you’re making a reserve wine, you don’t simply throw everything together and hope excellence emerges.

You decide where your best fruit belongs.

The reserve blend isn’t special because everything made it in. It’s special because someone decided what deserved to.

There’s a CEO lesson in there for us.

Last week, we talked about protecting your company’s greatest asset ─ YOU.

We talked about the HR Department of YOU, Inc. and what it means to be a responsible employer of yourself — to protect, develop, and retain the human being your business depends upon.

But protecting a valuable asset is only part of good stewardship.

You also have to decide where to invest it. You have to decide what’s the best use of everything you bring to the table …

Your time.

Your attention.

Your energy.

Your creativity.

Your experience.

Your confidence.

Your relationships.

Your reputation.

Your finite capacity.

Those are some of the most valuable resources inside YOU, Inc.

And here’s the thing we don’t always recognize and what makes allocating those resources a CEO-level decision:

Not everything deserves the reserve-level version of you.

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🌿 YOU, Inc. Series: Protection Creates Capacity. Leadership Decides Where It Goes.

Imagine that you’ve gotten really good at protecting your resources …

You’ve created some boundaries around your working hours. Maybe you’ve stopped answering email every time your phone makes a noise. Or you’re taking an actual lunch break. Perhaps you’re protecting some thinking time.

Maybe you’ve even put a new HR policy in place for YOU, Inc.

Excellent. But now what?

Because there’s another side to stewardship that we don’t talk about nearly as often.

What are you doing with the capacity you’ve protected?

As the CEO of YOU, Inc., it’s part of your job to not only ask that question, but also to have a good answer for yourself.

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You can carefully protect your best creative hour of the day … and then spend it clearing routine email.

You can create a boundary that gives you back an afternoon … and immediately fill the space with three low-priority obligations.

You can become more intentional about protecting your attention … and still give that attention to every interesting opportunity that wanders by.

You can finally create some breathing room in your business … and then decide breathing room looks suspiciously like an available appointment slot.

Ask me how I know. 😊

Protecting your resources matters.

But carefully protecting something valuable and then spending it indiscriminately isn’t stewardship, either.

Protection creates capacity. Leadership decides where that capacity goes.

And that’s where discernment enters the conversation.

Not Everything Deserves Your Reserve-Level Resources

One of the hardest realities of running a solo business is that your most valuable resources are finite.

There are only so many hours in a day when your brain is doing its best work. You have only so much emotional bandwidth. Only so much creative energy.

There are only so many people you can deeply support. Only so many projects you can care about at the same time. Only so much room on your calendar. There are only so many meaningful yeses you can give.

And yet we can approach our businesses as though the goal is to somehow manufacture enough of ourselves to cover everything.

Maybe if we get more organized. Wake up earlier. Find a better productivity app. Create the perfect schedule. Become more disciplined.

Surely then we’ll be able to give everything the attention it deserves.

Except …

What if everything doesn’t deserve the same attention?

That’s a different question.

And it’s a leadership question.

Good stewardship doesn’t mean finding a way to give everything the best of you.

It means deciding what deserves to get the best of you.

Sometimes our problem isn’t that we’re wasting our resources on obviously terrible things. It’s that we’re giving reserve-level resources to perfectly ordinary priorities.

It’s like using $100 bottles of wine to cook with.

We’re spending our clearest thinking time on tasks that don’t require it. Or we’re giving disproportionate emotional energy to one difficult relationship. Maybe we’re investing hours in an offer that produces very little — for our clients or for us. Maybe we’re giving our best creative energy to a marketing platform simply because someone told us we should be there.

Or maybe we’re saying yes to opportunities because they’re good opportunities without asking whether they’re good opportunities for us.

Not everything needs to be bad before it stops deserving your best resources. Sometimes even something good doesn’t make the cut.

The Hardest Leadership Decisions Aren’t Good vs. Bad

If every business decision were between one obviously wonderful choice and one spectacularly terrible one, leadership would be much easier.

The terrible client who doesn’t pay, ignores every boundary, and makes your eye twitch whenever her name appears in your inbox? Probably not a difficult CEO decision.

The opportunity that clearly conflicts with your values? That’s a clear no.

The project you hate, nobody wants, and that loses money? We probably don’t need to schedule a strategic retreat to figure that one out.

The harder decisions are between things that all have something going for them.

An opportunity can be good — and still not belong in your business.

A client can be good — and still not be the right fit anymore.

An idea can be good — and still not deserve this season’s resources.

A commitment can have served you beautifully — and still have reached its expiration date.

That’s where leadership gets harder.

Because now you’re not separating good from bad.

You’re separating good from right. Even more specifically, you’re separating good from right for right now.

And good and right are not the same thing.

A winemaker isn’t insulting perfectly good fruit by deciding it doesn’t belong in a particular reserve wine.

The question isn’t simply: Is this good?

The question is: Does this belong in what we’re trying to make?

That’s a much more useful question for the CEO of YOU, Inc., too.

Pruning Isn’t a Verdict

I think this is where a lot of us get stuck. Especially those of us who are responsible. Loyal. Persistent. The women who pride ourselves on following through.

We can start believing we’re only allowed to release something after we’ve proven beyond a reasonable doubt that it’s terrible.

The client needs to become awful. The commitment needs to become unbearable. The strategy needs to completely stop working. The opportunity needs to have an obvious downside.

Otherwise, shouldn’t we stick with it?

Shouldn’t we be grateful?

Shouldn’t we try harder?

Shouldn’t we be consistent?

But pruning doesn’t require a villain.

You don’t have to turn a perfectly lovely client into a problem in order to admit that the work no longer fits.

You don’t have to declare an idea a failure because you’re choosing not to pursue it.

You don’t have to resent a commitment before you’re allowed to finish your season with it.

You don’t have to prove something is bad before you decide that something else deserves those resources more.

Pruning isn’t deciding something was bad. It’s deciding it no longer belongs in the blend you’re making.

That’s discernment.

And sometimes that means saying:

This was good.

I’m glad I did it.

It mattered.

And I’m not choosing it now.

All four of those things can be true at the same time.

As the Blend Changes, So Do the Decisions

There’s another reason something good may no longer be right for right now …

The blend you’re making now may not be the blend you were making three years ago.

Because your business has changed. Your clients may have changed. Or your goals may have changed.

Your family may have changed. Your capacity may have changed.

You may have changed.

And I think there’s something particularly important about acknowledging that at this stage of life.

One of the benefits of being a Gen X woman is that we’ve accumulated enough evidence to know ourselves a little better than we used to.

We know more about what matters to us. We know more about what drains us. And we know what we’re good at — as well as, increasingly, what we have absolutely no desire to become good at.

We may be less interested in proving things simply because somebody else thinks we should.

Our kids need us differently than they did 10 years ago. Our parents may need us differently. Our bodies definitely have opinions about schedules we once tolerated without much thought.

Our ambitions may have evolved.

We may want more impact and less noise. More depth and less volume.

More freedom.

More meaning.

More room for an actual life alongside the business we’ve worked so hard to build.

None of that makes the woman you were before wrong. And it doesn’t make the decisions she made wrong either.

They may have been exactly right for the blend she was making then.

But you aren’t required to keep making the same blend forever.

Good stewardship isn’t preserving every decision you’ve ever made. It’s deciding what still belongs in the life and business you’re leading now.

Changing the blend isn’t evidence that the old blend was wrong.

It may simply mean you’re making something different now.

Ask Better Questions About Where Your Resources Go

So how do you know what deserves your reserve-level resources?

Start by asking something more useful than, “Is this good?”

Instead, try:

Does this deserve the resources I’m giving it?

That question can lead you somewhere interesting.

Think about a client, offer, project, platform, commitment, expectation, habit, or opportunity that’s currently receiving resources from YOU, Inc.

Then get curious.

Does this still belong?

Not, “Did it ever belong?”

And not, “Was I wrong to choose it?”

Does it belong now?

What is this costing besides time?

Maybe the hour on your calendar isn’t the biggest cost. Maybe it’s the mental energy before the meeting. Or the recovery afterward.

Maybe the thing is costing the creative attention you can’t give something else. Or the space it occupies in your head. Or the constant low-level obligation of remembering it exists.

What does keeping this prevent me from choosing?

Every yes occupies space. Sometimes that’s literal calendar space. Sometimes it’s financial. Sometimes it’s emotional. And sometimes it’s simply the number of things your brain can hold before it begins dropping them like an overloaded waitress carrying six dinner plates.

And finally, here’s the question I especially want you to sit with:

If this weren’t already in the blend, would I add it today?

Not because someone asked. Not because you’ve always done it. Not because it’s technically working. And not because a business expert said you should.

Knowing what you know now … about your business, about your priorities, about your capacity, and about yourself …

Would you choose it again today?

Your answer is information. And you can use that information to inform your decisions about where to allocate your assets.

The CEO’s Job Isn’t to Fit Everything In

There’s a sneaky belief underneath a lot of productivity advice that if we were organized enough, disciplined enough, focused enough, efficient enough, we could somehow make everything fit.

We could serve every client. Pursue every good idea. Show up on every platform. Accept every interesting opportunity. Maintain every commitment. Keep every tradition. Answer every request.

And after all that ─ the treacherous theory goes ─ we would still somehow have time left over for the people, health, creativity, rest, and experiences that make up the rest of YOU, Inc.

But that’s not reality. That’s not leadership.

And it’s certainly not stewardship.

The CEO’s job isn’t to fit everything in.

The CEO’s job is to decide what deserves company resources.

That means sometimes saying no to something bad.

Easy enough.

But it also means saying no — or not now, or not this way, or not as much — to something perfectly good.

Because something else is more important.

You don’t need to become efficient enough to give everything the best of you.

You need to become discerning enough to know what deserves it.

The goal isn’t an emptier blend.

It’s a more intentional one.

🌱 Action Step This Week: Choose One Thing to Prune

This week, identify one thing that’s currently receiving resources from YOU, Inc.

One.

We’re not doing an entire business purge. We’re not backing a dumpster into the driveway.

Choose just one client, commitment, offer, project, platform, habit, responsibility, expectation, or opportunity.

Then ask:

If this weren’t already in the blend, would I add it today?

If the answer is no — or even a slightly uncomfortable probably not — pay attention.

Maybe it needs to be released.

Or maybe pruning doesn’t mean eliminating it completely …

You might reduce it.

Renegotiate it.

Pause it.

Finish it and not renew it.

Delegate part of it.

Change the way you’re doing it.

Whatever you choose, don’t stop with what you’re taking away.

Decide where the recovered resource will go.

Finish this sentence:

I’m giving less __________ to __________ so I can give more __________ to __________.

Maybe:

I’m giving less attention to a platform I’ve outgrown so I can give more creative energy to my newsletter.

Or:

I’m giving fewer evening hours to work so I can give more of myself to my family.

Or:

I’m giving less calendar space to an offer that’s run its course so I can develop the one my clients actually need now.

That’s the point.

Pruning isn’t about proving how much you can eliminate.

It’s resource allocation.

A reserve blend isn’t valuable because somebody managed to cram everything into it.

It’s valuable because someone knew the fruit. Knew the goal. Knew what they were trying to create. And chose accordingly.

The same is true for YOU, Inc.

Of everything you’ve grown, built, accepted, and accumulated …

what actually deserves to be in the blend you’re making now?

Your best resources deserve your best discernment.

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