Ep. 92 –  Why You Feel Stuck in Your Business (& Why It’s Not Your Fault)

Feeling Stuck in Your Business Can Feel Like a Lonely Struggle

Maybe you’ve been thinking: “This used to be easier. Why is this so hard now?”

I’ve been there. In 2019, I had a moment where I sat back in my chair and said out loud, “I’ve outgrown my business.” It was both scary and freeing.

Doing Business Gently podcast - episode 92

Many women entrepreneurs reach this point but don’t know what’s happening. You feel stuck. Marketing feels like pushing a boulder uphill. Client work that once excited you now drains your energy.

Here’s what you need to know: this feeling isn’t a sign of failure. It’s a sign of growth.

What you’ll learn in this week’s podcast episode:

  • How to tell the difference between a temporary slump and truly outgrowing your business
  • Why buying more courses or hustling harder won’t fix an alignment problem
  • The clear signs that you’ve evolved past your current business model
  • A simple framework to help you get back into alignment

There are two types of “stuckness” in business. The first is just a bump in the road. Maybe you need a vacation or some rest. After a break, things flow again.

The second type is deeper. It’s when you’ve grown as a person, but your business hasn’t kept up. Your skills, confidence, and vision have expanded. The business you created no longer fits who you’ve become.

This gap between who you are now and what your business demands is what I call the “alignment gap.” It’s like driving a car that keeps pulling to one side. It’s tiring, inefficient, and not sustainable.

It means you have an alignment problem.

Remember

Recognizing this growth point can be the doorway to your next level of success. Don’t ignore it or feel guilty about it. Embrace it. You’re not failing – you’re evolving.

Listen to the episode to learn more and a simple framework you can start using today.

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Marta Goertzen: Do you ever wake up feeling like your business is running you or it just doesn’t fit right anymore instead of you running your business and actually deciding where you’re going to go today?

At the end of 2019, I was there. My business didn’t fit right. It felt like it was a juggernaut that was running me instead of me running it.

[00:00:23] My business didn’t feel right. Now I know feelings aren’t always reliable, but they’re often a signal that we shouldn’t ignore. And I realized I could not ignore that sense and that feeling of things not being right. Client work felt harder. Marketing my business felt like rolling a big boulder up a tall, tall hill.

[00:00:46] And finding motivation, where I used to find it easy to get motivated to get things done, was getting harder and harder. It was then that I had a sit-back-in-my-seat moment as all of a sudden I said out loud, “I’ve outgrown my business,” and I’ll share more about that a little bit later.

But today, I want to help you understand why you’re feeling stuck in your business, why it’s not your fault, and introduce you to a short framework or a few steps that can help you start moving forward again.

[00:01:23] Hey there, I am your host, Marta Goertzen, and welcome to Doing Business Gently, a podcast for women who are ready to think and do business from a place of purpose and intention. If that sounds like you, and you’ve wondered what it means to have a gentle and aligned business, you are in the right place.

[00:01:41] This is a safe place where we talk about life-business integration, and we approach this idea of creating a life-first business, one that’s aligned to fit you, your values, priorities, personality, and the current season of life you’re in. We also talk about how to find business clarity so that you’re not constantly second-guessing every decision you make in your business.

[00:02:02] We also talk about how our faith and business can work together. And we talk about doing all of this from a place and a habit of rest. So join me today as we take a look at how we get stuck in our businesses and what we can do about it.

[00:02:19] You may have heard this phrase or saying from different coaches: “What got you here will not get you there.” There are a lot of times we get into this feeling of being stuck,

[00:02:31] or I call it “stuckness,” for lack of a better word—understanding that things are just not as smooth in our businesses as they used to be.

[00:02:40] But there are two types of stuckness. Sometimes it is just a little bump in the road. It is just a little growing pain. Maybe we jumped ahead of ourselves and we just need to learn to take a step back, take a breath, and get through it. Or there are times when we just need a break.

[00:02:59] We need to take a vacation, we need to step back from the computer and recharge our batteries. Often once you do that, things get back to running smoothly again. You realize it was just a little hiccup. You were tired or it was just a crazy season, and things are now getting back to normal. That is one kind of stuckness in our business.

[00:03:20] There’s another kind though, a kind that we don’t often talk about, and that is where we are growing. It’s natural growth as an entrepreneur. And this is when you often realize you need a full-on reset. You feel like you want to hit that stop button and say, “Wait, this isn’t working and I need to figure out why.”

[00:03:42] This, you’re going to realize, is not a simple quick fix. This is not just something a good vacation or stepping away from the computer moment is going to fix. And often this sense of stuckness, this growth sneaks up on us. We don’t always see it coming up behind us.

You can often recognize it because you find that you’re journaling the same things.

[00:04:05] Back at the end of 2019, I had looked back through my journals and realized I had been talking about the same thing, asking some of the same questions for at least six months. But I didn’t notice it until I took that moment to step back and take a closer look at what was going on in my life and my business.

[00:04:24] A lot of times you’re Googling the same thing or you’re thinking the same thoughts like “This isn’t working. I don’t get it. This used to be easier. Why is this so hard? I don’t like doing this anymore. What do I do differently?” You find yourself looking for this magic wand type of answer and then all of a sudden things are going to be better.

[00:04:45] And unfortunately, that isn’t what happens no matter how much we wish it would. This is a moment when we realize we need to take a step back. We need to get honest about where we are at in our business, how we feel in our business, what’s working, what’s not.

[00:05:01] And oftentimes this is when we realize that it’s time for us to admit, maybe you need to have your own sit-back-in-your-seat moment and realize, “I’ve outgrown my business. I’ve outgrown what I’ve built.” And sometimes we need to say it out loud for it to be clear and for us to really get it.

And even more, I want you to realize that if this is you at this moment, that’s okay.

[00:05:28] Admitting this is not a failure. Admitting that you’re not doing anything wrong, but you are just growing—that this is actually evidence of that growth. It’s evidence that you have learned and you’ve grown and you’ve changed. That’s actually success.

So even as hard as it may feel in the moment, it is setting you up for an amazing opportunity when you take that moment to admit, “This isn’t working. I don’t like what I built anymore. It’s time to make a change.”

[00:05:55] So there’s a lot of things that happen when we get to this point, and sometimes it’s going to keep us in that stuck place no matter if it was just that bump in the road type of stuckness or “Oh, I need to hit the reset button” type of stuckness.

[00:06:15] Sometimes we misdiagnose what’s going on. So let’s take a look at a few of these.

One, we can easily get stuck in “I just need to do more.” Sometimes we feel like, “Oh, well, if I get this other course, or if I get certified in this area, if I just feel like I’m more of an expert and I change this little thing over here, I change my website a little bit, all of a sudden things are going to make sense again.”

[00:06:41] But when you take that step back and ask, “Okay, is this just a hiccup moment? Or am I in need of a bigger change?” And you see that this is a time for a bigger change. You can’t unsee that.

That happened to me. All of a sudden I thought, “Oh, okay, I’ve made this big admission, but I don’t know what to do with it.”

[00:06:58] And so I just kept going on doing what I was doing, but the longer I did that, the more I could see what I was doing was very much out of alignment with how I had grown, what I wanted to do, what I knew I could do now, and I couldn’t unsee it.

And so I had to realize that buying more courses, watching more webinars, hiring yet another coach that’s going to teach me something specific

[00:07:24] was not going to help me. It soon made it very clear to me what I did need, and that was to take the time to ask some deeper, better questions to fully understand where I was in my business today. And it helped start giving me a glimpse of where I wanted to go.

So if you feel being pulled by that “more”—download more, sign up for more, buy more—take a step back and ask why.

[00:07:52] Because a lot of times this is noise, this is confusion, these are bright shiny objects that are distracting you from taking a deeper look at what’s really going on in your business.

We also can get stuck in that toxic hustle lie, because toxic hustle lies. It tells us that it’s up to us to figure it out.

[00:08:11] It’s up to us to keep up at the speed of light and keep all those plates spinning up in the air. We live in an entrepreneurial world. We tend to have two extremes. One is totally anti-hustle, and then we have the other side of the equation that says every bright shiny object and then this one and that one and this one is worth chasing. And if you do more, if you get another certification, if you buy one more course, you’re gonna figure things out.

[00:08:37] I can tell you from experience, it doesn’t. Not when you finally can see that you are in a moment of growth, in a season of growth. Doing more, hustling harder is not going to help.

And then unfortunately, this often puts us into another big misdiagnosis, because all of a sudden

[00:08:56] we start to doubt our capabilities. We start to doubt our discernment. We start to discount our intuition. When you’re in that moment of, “My business doesn’t fit anymore. I’ve grown and I’m ready to change,” but you don’t take the time to explore that with those better and deeper questions.

[00:09:15] Your business gets a lot harder, and the harder it gets, the more self-doubt creeps in and you start to wonder, “What is wrong with me? This isn’t working. I’m doing it wrong.” It’s a cycle of thinking that gets us nowhere, but it’s so easy to lose ourselves in it.

I just want you to think about this for a minute: if you are in a stage of growth and you are in a season of realizing “This isn’t working. I need to make some changes,” the problem isn’t your skills, your capabilities, or even how much you are working.

[00:09:51] It’s an alignment issue, and it’s an alignment issue between who you’ve become, what your business is asking from you in its current form, and where your business is going and where you want to go with it.

[00:10:04] You are not the problem here. You’re not doing anything wrong and you’re not untalented. You’re not unskilled. You are growing. You have the skills. You’ve done the work. You have created your business. That is amazing.

But then when you do understand that there’s a misalignment between your growth—the idea that more is possible and who you are becoming—and the business you have right now isn’t matching up,

[00:10:32] that’s where the problem lies. And it’s in that journey of coming back to alignment that is where the challenge lies.

So we find that we’re in a season of growth and now we have this gap. It’s an alignment gap. And so when we think about alignment, think about it this way.

[00:10:51] You have changed since you started your business. Think about day one or that first week or even that first month or that first year.

[00:10:59] Think about how scared you felt at that time.

[00:11:02] I know I was. I thought all of a sudden I didn’t have anybody to report to. All of a sudden I was working for clients. I was responsible for their websites, their emails.

[00:11:09] It was scary at first, but through time, you’ve gained skills. I’ve gained skills. You’ve cultivated clients. You’ve found clients and started working with them. You’ve developed relationships with them. You now have experience that makes problem-solving and doing the work for your clients that felt so scary in the beginning much easier now. And you can do it faster.

[00:11:33] You can do it better. You find yourself giving more advice like, “Have you thought of this? Have you thought of that?” Or in my case, it got to the point where when I was doing a lot more websites, I knew that there was a problem on this WordPress website. I knew how to fix it within a couple minutes instead of sweating bullets and taking hours to figure out what’s going on.

That is all a sign of growth. Look at today and where you are now versus where you started. You have grown.

[00:12:02] You’ve grown as an entrepreneur. Your life has probably changed, your confidence has changed, your family circumstances have probably changed. So when your business does not keep up with your growth, with your changing interests, with your changing skills, you are now out of step.

[00:12:20] And that is such a frustrating place to be. And for a lot of us, it’s also a guilty place to be because we realize, “Wait a minute, I don’t enjoy this business, this business that I’ve been given and I’ve been given to steward and steward well, but now I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to. And am I being ungrateful to not enjoy it as much anymore?”

[00:12:40] And there’s a whole other episode and thought spiral we can talk about in that respect. But that is also a sign that you are in the midst of growth, and there are some things that we need to diagnose and figure out.

When we think about alignment, often we think about a car. So when you are driving a car that is out of alignment, there’s that annoying pull that feels like no matter what you do, your car is going to pull to the left or the right.

[00:13:07] And that is tiring. It takes a lot more of your time and attention and your focus as you’re driving. And it’s really not great for the car or your tires either. Your tires wear differently. And so all of a sudden that longevity, that life that you’re expecting out of your tires is being eaten away. And it’s not a sustainable way to drive for a long period of time.

[00:13:28] This is all a great description of what misalignment or that alignment gap feels like. And this is no way to do business gently.

So a couple of signs I want you to consider that maybe you have outgrown your business, or the type of business, or the business model you started out with:

Maybe you dread the tasks that you used to love, or you find that your energy is consistently low around the work that you used to love to do and you got excited about it.

[00:14:02] You look at your books, you look at your accounting and maybe you look successful on paper, but you feel very unfulfilled personally. Or this often happens too: all of a sudden that your business doesn’t look quite as successful on paper because you’re not marketing the way you used to. You’re not going out there and cultivating those clients.

[00:14:23] You’re finding it harder to market your business and you still on top of that feel unfulfilled personally.

[00:14:32] Remember, this is all a sign of misalignment. This is how we describe the alignment gap. This is not an “It’s your fault” moment. This is a sign of growth and it happens to all of us as entrepreneurs over time.

I have been in business for a while and I notice I hit this point about every four to six years. And I’ve gone through several different brandings. I’ve gone through different evolutions of my business. I have pivoted several times and those all came at moments when I realized I’ve outgrown the business I created and it’s time to pivot.

[00:15:08] Sometimes it’s a little pivot. Sometimes it’s a big pivot. And each time I’ve done this, I have had to walk myself through a specific set of steps to help me understand this change.

So I’d like to introduce you to my Rediscover, Redefine, Realign framework. And this is a structured approach that helps you ask really good questions, but it is not a cookie-cutter approach because every client I’ve worked with that is going through this is different and has different needs, different skills, and different amounts of time in their business.

[00:15:40] And so it’s not a cookie-cutter approach, but it is a way for you to start asking those better, deeper questions to really understand what’s going on in your business.

So I’m just going to walk you through this real quick. First is the rediscover phase. And this is really taking a step back and doing a deep dive and understanding who you are now and how you have grown.

[00:16:03] And as we’ve talked about in this episode, if you look back to day one or even year one of your business, I can guarantee you, you have changed, you have grown. And sometimes we need to take the time to recognize that and celebrate it instead of ignoring it and hiding it under the rug so that nobody sees it.

[00:16:22] You have grown as an entrepreneur. Congratulations, this is a good thing.

Then step two is we’re going to go and redefine. We’re going to decide what your business should look like. We want to make sure that it is now getting back into alignment with your growth, your changing interests, your skill level.

[00:16:42] So we’re going to redefine your business and what needs to change. And then we’re going to take the time to realign. This is the final step. And this is where you are creating an evolving roadmap to keep you on track.

Because now that you understand that you are growing, your business hasn’t kept up.

[00:17:00] Now, the next time this happens, and it will if you’re in business for any length of time, you now have these signs and these markers and these arrows that you can start recognizing, “Oh, this is what’s happening.” And with this framework and with this understanding, you now have the steps you need to take to make sure that you’re evolving to the next level, that you’re acknowledging the growth, and you’re not getting to that point where you are just stuck in your business and you have no idea what to do.

[00:17:29] This is the process that I have taken myself through several times, and this particular framework and the steps that I took really came to light in more of a formal manner back in 2019 and 2020. Because I knew that I needed to ask myself the better, deeper questions, but it took me a while to figure out what those better and deeper questions were.

[00:17:50] And I learned by walking my clients through this, members of my mastermind through this, and asking them better and deeper questions because the goal for my clients and for myself was to get to the heart of the issue and understand where that alignment gap was coming from, where that feeling of misalignment and out of step with my business was coming from.

Going through these steps—

[00:18:13] recognizing and celebrating growth is an amazing feeling. Knowing the direction you want to go in and then taking the actual steps to get there instead of consuming more information and more content that really only leaves you feeling more confused. That is an amazing, freeing feeling. It’s a sense of hope that you are made for more and it’s okay to dream more.

[00:18:36] And it’s time to pursue it and help your clients in a deeper, more meaningful, more life-changing way.

So I just want to recap here for you. Remember, asking better, deeper questions about your business is important. Don’t ignore these questions and definitely do not skim it over and then shove those ideas and those questions under the rug.

[00:18:59] Take a moment to really take a look at why you’re feeling stuck. Is it that little hiccup, small bump in the road issue? Or do you need a break? Or is this time for something bigger? Is this going to take some strategy and maybe hitting that reset button?

And also understand that this is an amazing opportunity for further growth.

[00:19:22] When you are in that stuck point, that point of “This isn’t working. I don’t like this anymore,” you are on the verge of something amazing. I have experienced it myself and I’ve walked my clients through this as well. To watch their faces light up and get it and move in the new direction with confidence is amazing.

Next week, I want to dive further into this Rediscover, Redefine, Realign framework and how to put it to work for you and how to understand it so you can start asking those better and deeper questions.

[00:19:54] If any of this has jumped out at you and said, “Yes, that is where I’m at,” I would really like to hear from you. You can reach out to me through my website, or you can send me a DM through Instagram. The links to both are in the show notes. Let’s chat. Let’s figure out what your next steps are and how the Rediscover, Redefine, and Realign framework could help you.

[00:20:15] Thank you for joining me today. Remember, let’s keep asking those better and deeper questions. The questions that help us create a simple and sustainable business where we can do business gently.

Related posts:

  1. Ep. 40 – 3 Questions That Won’t Help the Multi-passionate Entrepreneur Find Business Clarity
  2. Ep. 41 – Is Your Business Clarity Journey Stressing You Out?
  3. Ep. 43 – How to Overcome Toxic Hustle with a Selah Mindset
  4. Ep. 44 – Want a Simple and Sustainable Business? Define Your “Enough Points”

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