Over 15 years of growing, pivoting, learning. Not theory.
Hi, I’m Marta Goertzen, Gentle Business Coach
For Christian women entrepreneurs over 50 rediscover who they’ve become, realign their business to match, and fall in love with their work again, gently, at their pace, without starting over.
If you’ve ever felt like your business no longer fits who you are…
You’re not lost. You’re not behind. You’ve just grown past the season your business was built for.
I know that feeling from the inside. Not from a case study. Not from a training. From lived experience, caregiving seasons, health crises, grief, and the slow, disorienting process of rebuilding a business identity that actually fits who I’d become.
That’s why I do this work. And it's why I get where you are and how frustrating and discouraging it can be.
My story started where many of yours did.
Not with a grand vision or a business plan. With a need.
In 2007, I was caring for my mother and my great aunt while working a corporate job that was killing me slowly. Then I made what felt like a slightly desperate decision: I was going to build a business I could do from home, that was flexible enough to bend around caregiving, and sustainable enough to carry me through the unknown.
I started as a virtual assistant. Then taught myself web design. Then became a known as fixing broken and hacked sites. Then a website coach, and now? A business coach. Each pivot wasn’t a failure. it was a response to growth. A woman growing, shifting, and rebuilding around the life she was actually living.
The business that started as a caregiving solution became something I had been wanting and dreaming of, a way of working that gave me freedom to be fully present for the people who needed me. When my sister was in her final months, I was able to pack up my car with my dog and my laptop and go to be with her and her family. Not scrambling (most of the time!). Not choosing between work and family. There. I truly have amazing clients!
That’s when I understood on a deeper level, what I would eventually call, a gentle and sustainable business.
The pivot that changed everything
After 18 years in the online business world, riding the waves of ups and downs, trying different strategies and tactics, buying programs and hiring coaches I hit my own season of misalignment. I had a business. I had experience. I had clients. And I felt completely disconnected from all of it.
I’d spent years absorbing other people’s voices: coaches, programs, frameworks, AI tools, social media “best practices.” And somewhere in all of that input, not only did I lose the connection I had with my business, I lost my voice and stopped using it.
Recovering my authentic voice, learning to hear myself again underneath all that noise, became the work. And it became the foundation for everything I now teach.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
What I know now
The restlessness you feel isn’t a sign that something is wrong. It’s a sign that you’ve grown. The 3–5 year itch, that feeling that something needs to change but you can’t quite name what, is one of the most consistent patterns I’ve seen across every client I’ve worked with.
The problem is almost never the tactics. It’s almost always alignment. And alignment work, the intentional, honest excavation of who you’ve become and what your business needs to look like now, is what most business coaching doesn’t make room for.
I make room for it. It’s what I love to do.
What it’s like to work with me.
I don’t coach from a place of having arrived. I coach from the continuing journey of learning and growing. A journey of pivots, asking the same questions, doing the same internal work alongside you.
Every session starts with you and where you are in your entrepreneurial journey. We don’t start the business problem. We create safety before we touch strategy, because you can’t be honest about what’s really going on until you feel safe enough to say it out loud.
I’ll name things you’re circling but can’t quite say yet. I’ll challenge mindsets that are keeping you stuck, gently, always with a different way of seeing offered alongside. I’ll ask what you want, not just what you think you need to do (I love to challenge need statements 🙂 !). And I’ll give you permission, repeatedly, to act from who you actually are.
We’ll always leave with the next step. Not an overwhelming plan. Not a 47-point action list. The one next thing, and sometimes I’ll ask you to cut even that in half.
Faith is woven into how I work, not as a formula, but as a foundation. We begin with prayer. We ask God to help us hear what He is saying beneath the noise. We hold the work and the calling together, because I don’t believe they’re separate.
The core of my business is to reduce stress and help women love their business again.
A little more about my background...
I’ve been in the online business world for 18+ years, long enough to have lived through many platform shifts, hard lessons learned on working sustainably, and hearing many different versions of what “successful” was supposed to look like.
My experience includes:
- 18+ years as an online entrepreneur across multiple pivots and business models
- Work as a virtual assistant, web designer, technical troubleshooter, website coach, and business coach
- Creator of the Gentle Business Framework and the Business Clarity Compass
- Host of the Doing Business Gently Podcast
- Facilitator of the Gentle Business Mastermind
- Deep personal experience with caregiving seasons, grief, health challenges, and business reinvention
My approach is informed by everything I’ve lived, not just everything I’ve studied. That’s what makes it different. And that’s what makes it work for women who are tired of advice that doesn’t account for real life.
A few things that have nothing to do with business... 😉
Currently focused on: learning to grow and use herbs for life giving cups of tea, slow mornings, gardening, food preserving, and… I’ll stop there.
Loyal to: Star Wars. The original trilogy. Stargate SG-1 & Atlantis, Hunger Games (books and movies), NCIS… yes, I am a sink your teeth into a good series fan.
My office co-worker: Mochi, my Chihuahua Dachshund, who takes her supervisory responsibilities very seriously.
A few favorites: a beautiful journal and a pen that actually writes smoothly, dark chocolate over milk, and getting lost on a slow walk through the woods.
What rest looks like for me: Morning walks with Miss Mochi, weekends off from work and social media. Spending time in the garden, creating with my hands, and photography.
Things I say a lot: “A gentle business is not a quiet business,” “Keep it simple, keep it sustainable, and steward it well,” “Start with rest.” Oh, and, “Awesome pawsome,” and “Okay.” (That one I say way too much! Mochi even recognizes the word now.)
And as you might have figured out by now... I love dogs 🙂
If something here spoke to you…
You’re probably exactly who I do this work for.
Not sure where to start? The free Business Alignment Audit is a gentle first step, a way to pause, get honest, and see clearly where you are right now.
Ready to explore working together? I’d love to hear where you are in your pivot.