If Nothing Changes, Where Will You Be in Three Years?

9 Nov

I remember the first time I asked myself this question.

I was sitting at my desk, looking at my calendar for the week ahead. Same clients. Same projects. Same revenue. Same exhaustion.

And something in me just... broke.

Not in a dramatic way. No tears or crisis moment. Just a quiet, devastating realisation: If nothing changes, I'll be sitting here in three years doing exactly this.

And I couldn't bear it. The thought of doing the same thing, day in, day out, in a year’s time was the jolt I needed to make changes.

The Business I Built Without Meaning To

What no one tells you about building a business is that it's very easy to create something that looks successful from the outside but feels like a prison from the inside.

This version of my business, I'd been running my business for a few years, doing Brand Strategy and Social Media Management. I had clients. I was paying my bills. People would say "you're doing so well!" and I'd smile and say thank you.

But inside, it was the opposite.

I hated the clients I was working with. Not because they were bad people exactly, but because I'd said yes to everyone who'd pay me, regardless of whether I actually wanted to work with them.

I hated the projects I was delivering. I’d agreed to things to because I thought I "should" offer them, not because they energised me or played to my strengths. I was constantly overdelivering, doing more than I should so I was needed, and wanted.

I hated that I couldn't say no. That I was so afraid of losing income that I accepted work that drained me, with people I didn't enjoy, on terms that weren't sustainable.

I'd built a cage, and I was the one who'd locked myself inside, with a padlock made of fear, doubts and shame.

The Question I Was Avoiding

"If nothing changes, where will you be in three years?"

I'd been avoiding this question for months, maybe years, because I knew the answer, and it slightly terrified me. I'd be exactly where I was. Just more tired, resentful, trapped, and probably burnout. Again.

The business wouldn't magically transform. The wrong clients wouldn't suddenly leave. The projects I hated wouldn't disappear on their own.

Nothing changes unless something changes, and I was the something that needed to change.

Why We Stay Stuck

I've talked to hundreds of founders since then, and I've realised that I'm not alone in this.

So many of us are running businesses that have become cages. We're stuck in patterns we never meant to create, working with people we don't enjoy, delivering things we don't care about.

And we stay stuck because:

We tell ourselves it's temporary.
"I'll just do this for another year, then I'll pivot." But another year becomes two, becomes five, and nothing shifts.
We're afraid of losing what we have.
Even if what we have doesn't make us happy, at least it's familiar. At least it pays the bills. Change feels risky.
We don't believe we can have what we actually want.
The business we dream about feels too different, too big, too "not what people like me do." So we settle for fine.
We're waiting to feel ready.
We think that one day, we'll wake up with clarity and confidence and courage, and THEN we'll make the change. But that day never comes.

The truth is: waiting for the perfect moment to change is just another way of deciding to stay stuck.

The Moment Everything Shifted

That day, I did something I'd never done before. I wrote down the answer to the question: "If nothing changes, where will you be in three years?"

I wrote it all out. The clients I'd still be tolerating. The projects I'd still be forcing myself through. The resentment that would have grown. The dreams that would still be sitting in my notebook, waiting for "someday."

I made myself look at it. Really look at it and understood what it meant, and then I asked myself the harder question: "Is this what I'm choosing?"

What I understood in that moment was that staying stuck is a choice. It might not feel like a choice. It might feel like you're trapped, like you have no options, like this is just how it has to be, but that in itself is a choice.

Every day you don't change something or course correct, you're choosing the path you're on. And once I understood that, that staying stuck was something I was actively choosing, I couldn't unsee it.

What Changed (And What Didn't)

I wish I could tell you I had a dramatic transformation overnight. That I fired all my bad clients, redesigned my business, and everything was perfect within a month.

That's not what happened.

What happened was: I started making different choices. Small ones at first. I said no to a project that would have been easy money but would have drained me. It was terrifying. I was sure I'd regret it.

I didn't regret it.

I stopped over-delivering to prove my worth. I set boundaries with clients. Some of them didn't like it. A few left. The ones who stayed were the ones I actually wanted to work with. I got honest about what I actually wanted to build. Not what I thought I should build, not what would be most "marketable," but what would make me come alive.

And slowly, much more slowly than I wanted, things shifted. Not because I had some brilliant strategy. Not because I finally figured it all out.

But because I had taken control and stopped choosing to stay stuck.

The Question You Need to Ask Yourself

So I'm going to ask you what I asked myself: If nothing changes, where will you be in three years?

Not the optimistic version. Not the "maybe it'll get better" version. The real version. The one where you keep doing exactly what you're doing now, working with the clients you have now, delivering the projects you're delivering now, feeling the way you feel now.

Where will you be? Write it down. Make yourself look at it.

And then ask yourself: Is this what I'm choosing?

If the answer is no, if the thought of three more years like this makes something in you break the way it broke in me, then you already know what you need to do. You need to change something. Not everything or all at once. Not perfectly either, but you need to change something.

What This Looks Like in Practice

When I work with founders now, this is one of the first questions I ask them, and almost always, they try to avoid answering it.

It’s uncomfortable. It prompts thinking and feeling, and that can be tough. Instead they want to talk about strategy and marketing. About how to get more clients or charge more money or finally get visible.

But still I encourage them to answer the question first, because the strategy doesn't matter if you're building toward a future you don't actually want.

I worked with a founder recently, let’s call her Anna. She was juggling a part-time job and a freelance role, aiming to transition to full-time freelancing in three years. On the surface, she was doing everything “right”, keeping clients happy, meeting deadlines, hustling around the clock. But underneath, she was close to burning out.

When I asked her the question: “If nothing changes, where will you be in three years?”, she went quiet. Long silence. Then she admitted: "I’ll still be exhausted, doing work that doesn’t inspire me, running between roles, wondering why I’ve spent all this time just trying to keep everything afloat."

That was the moment everything shifted. Not because I gave her a strategy, or told her what to do, but because she finally let herself see the truth: she couldn’t do it all sustainably. She would have to make choices. And the timeline she had told herself was also hers to control and shape. It didn’t have to be three years if she wanted to make the transition faster.

Once she saw that, she couldn’t unsee it. She started saying no. She got honest about what she really wanted. She began taking steps to build a business that felt like hers, not one dictated by expectations or the idea of what she “should” do.

She’s still figuring out the exact path and the pace of change, but the shift has already started. She’s experimenting, adjusting, and taking small, deliberate actions toward a future that feels more aligned. And that, in itself, is a huge win.

The Hard Part No One Talks About

What I would like you to understand is that asking yourself this question is the easy part. Living with the answer is the hard part, because once you ask it (and really, honestly answer it), you can't pretend anymore.

You can't tell yourself it's fine. You can't convince yourself it'll get better on its own. You can't wait for the perfect moment to change.

You must decide: are you going to choose this future, or are you going to choose differently?

And different can feel scary.

It means saying no to things that feel safe. It means risking what you have for what you want. It means becoming someone different than who you've been.

But what I've learned after 25 years of building businesses and working with hundreds of founders: the scariest thing isn't changing. The scariest thing is staying the same and waking up three years from now wishing you'd had the courage to change.

Where Do You Want to Be?

So let me ask you again: If nothing changes, where will you be in three years?

And if that answer makes you feel trapped, resentful, or resigned, then ask yourself: What's one thing I could change right now?

Not everything. Not a complete transformation. Just one thing.

One client you stop saying yes to. One project you redesign to actually interest you. One boundary you set. One conversation you have. One choice you make differently.

Because three years from now, you'll either be exactly where you are, or you'll be somewhere you chose to go.

The only difference is: what you decide to do today.
Onwards and Upwards
- Becky

About the Author: Becky Benfield-Humberstone is a business coach for founders who've built businesses that feel like cages. She works with quietly ambitious entrepreneurs who are done playing small and ready to build something that feels unmistakably theirs. Based in the UK and working with clients globally via Zoom, she brings 25 years of business-building experience and an uncommon ability to see solutions in impossible situations.

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