by Lisa Erhart

Why Growth Is Never Finished

The Lesson from a French Chateau

My secret indulgence is a YouTube series called The Chateau Diaries, hosted by Stephanie Jarvis — the irrepressible spirit restoring the 16th-century Château de Lalande in rural France.

For two decades, Stephanie has filmed her journey: repairing walls, restoring frescoes, cooking for guests, and somehow keeping a centuries-old building alive. It’s messy, beautiful, and endlessly human.

In her recent 20-year anniversary episode, she said something that stopped me cold:

“I’ve finally stopped thinking there’s an end date to the château being finished. It’s a never-ending process of restoration and refinement.”

That line has lived in my head ever since. Because if you replace “château” with “business,” “career,” or “self,” the truth doesn’t change.

The Endless Restoration of a Founder

I’ve spent years building Funding4Growth — a platform, a mission, a movement. And like many founders, I’ve been haunted by invisible deadlines.

Launch faster.
Be more productive.
Get it done.

Somewhere along the way, I turned progress into punishment.
When milestones took longer than expected — like the twelve months I’ve spent preparing to launch the Funding4Growth Community — I told myself I was behind. I used words that no one who truly supports me would ever say.

That internal pressure eventually became physical. Exhaustion. Illness. Days in bed when my body finally refused to cooperate. And yet, even in those moments, my inner critic whispered, You’re wasting time.

Watching Stephanie scrub centuries of paint from stone, laughing as water poured through a leaking roof, I realised: she’s not behind. She’s becoming. And so am I.

Why We Crave the “Done”

We live in a culture obsessed with completion. We worship launch dates, funding rounds, and exit strategies. The message is clear: your worth is tied to your output.

But business — like a château — is a living organism. It breathes, cracks, evolves. There’s always another leak to fix, another idea to restore. The illusion of “finished” keeps us sprinting toward exhaustion, rather than building for endurance.

Perfection isn’t the goal; stewardship is.

When you accept that your business is a perpetual restoration, you trade panic for perspective. You start to see each phase — the delays, the pivots, even the pauses — as part of a long continuum of care.

Restoration Requires Patience and Presence

In The Chateau Diaries, Stephanie often says, “The château decides.”
Some weeks the roof collapses, and the kitchen renovation must wait. Other weeks, volunteers arrive unexpectedly, and progress accelerates in ways she never planned.

Founding a business feels the same. You think you’re working on marketing, but the real crisis is cash flow. You plan for growth, and instead you’re forced to rebuild your boundaries. The château decides. Life decides.

What separates sustainable founders from burnt-out ones isn’t efficiency — it’s adaptability. The ability to pause, recalibrate, and work with reality instead of against it.

The Cost of Self-Cruelty

When I look back at the times I pushed myself the hardest, I see how often cruelty masqueraded as commitment. I thought self-discipline meant self-denial. That if I just worked harder, I could outpace the doubt.

But as women founders, many of us internalise timelines that were never built for us — investor cycles, societal milestones, even the pressure to “have it all” by a certain age. When we inevitably fall behind those borrowed clocks, we punish ourselves.

I’ve seen this pattern in the founders I mentor: brilliant women convinced they’re failing because they’re not moving fast enough. They forget that endurance is progress.

Changing that mindset is hard. But what Stephanie models, quietly and consistently, is grace — the permission to be in process without apology.

Redefining Success as Stewardship

In restoration work, every improvement exposes another problem. Success doesn’t shrink the to-do list; it deepens it. Yet that’s not failure — it’s evidence of growth.

Founders experience the same paradox. The more visible your business becomes, the more complex your challenges. Success expands responsibility.

When I think about Funding4Growth, I realise I’ll never reach a moment when I can declare it “finished.” Nor should I. The platform, like the château, is meant to evolve — shaped by community, data, and the changing realities of women in business.

Our job isn’t to complete the work. It’s to keep caring for it.

What Restoration Looks Like in Business

If you’re feeling behind, here’s what I’ve learned — from Stephanie, and from my own hard seasons:

1. Drop the imaginary deadline. Momentum is a better metric than speed.

2. Maintain the structure. Your systems, like beams, need regular inspection — not perfection.

3. Celebrate small fixes. Every solved problem is a tile restored.

4. Let others in. Collaboration lightens both workload and spirit.

5. Keep the wonder. Purpose can survive exhaustion if curiosity stays alive.

Growth doesn’t require burnout. It requires stewardship.

The Freedom of Being Unfinished

The most liberating shift I’ve made this year is accepting that I’m not behind — I’m becoming.
I no longer measure myself against an invisible finish line. I measure by presence, integrity, and the courage to keep refining.

Like the château, Funding4Growth will always be a work in progress — and that’s not failure. That’s life. The cracks remind us we’re still building something worth protecting.

So to every founder carrying exhaustion like armour, hear this:
You don’t have to be done. You just have to keep going.

Because sometimes the most powerful thing you can say — to your business, your body, your dream — is the same thing Stephanie said to her château:

“We’re not finished. We’re still alive.”

Author Note
Lisa Erhart is a founder, funding strategist, and advocate for equitable access to capital. Through Funding4Growth, she helps women and diverse entrepreneurs build financially strong, impact-led businesses.