What To Do If You’ve Lost Your Business Mojo

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
- Maya Angelou

I’d like to talk to you about something that came up in a client session and how to make sense of it. What to do when we lose our business mojo or feel like we’ve fallen out of love with our business. Having been through this myself and coached countless others through it, I wanted to share the 4 main reasons behind this feeling and what to do about it.

You need to be doing something else entirely

This is the one I think is the least common but ironically it’s where many business owners go first. You might have experienced the “burn it all to the ground” feeling yourself. You know the one, when you just feel so sick of your business that you find yourself daydreaming about doing something completely different, like a whole other niche or even giving up on being a business owner altogether and getting a job. I think we’ve all been there at some point or another.

Rather than burning your business to the ground, however, I’m going to suggest that we can usually rekindle our love for our business by making one of three changes. Perhaps, there is a change you need to make regarding what you are doing in your business, or there is a change you need to make regarding how you are doing things in your business or maybe you’re feeling disillusioned and beaten down by a lack of tangible results and a change of thinking about what that means is all that is needed.

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

You need to change what you are doing

This is where we need to consider what we are doing in our business. This could be within our business model (the products and services we offer) or it could be within the back end of the business (how we administrate and manage our business). Perhaps we are offering long-term 1:1 coaching packages when our sweet spot would be one off single sessions. Perhaps we’re offering a group program when our sweet spot would be getting creative with online courses. Perhaps we love delivering our services but hate the marketing and admin involved in running our business.

Whatever it is, there’s a chance that you could easily reignite your passion for your business if you just make some changes to what you are doing. Given we’re nearing the end of the year, it’s the perfect time to to review what you do in your business and what you could do differently in 2023.

Suggested action:

Open up a blank page on your computer or in a notebook and write at the top of it the following question: What am I doing in my business that I really don’t enjoy? Then go ahead and list out everything that you DO in your business that feels heavy or drains you of energy. Once you have your list go though it line by line and write one of the following options: Stop, Change, Delegate or Automate.

You essentially want to assess each item on your list and ask yourself can I stop doing this altogether? Can I change what I am doing here (For example, changing long-term coaching programs to short-term or single sessions) or is this a task I can delegate to someone else or automate with a piece of software or a process?

You need to change how you are doing it

This is one that came up for me many years ago when I started to fall out of love with my 1:1 coaching service. It was back when I was life coaching and I had reached a point in my business where things were going really well, my prices were at an all time high and I had more clients saying yes to working together than ever before.

The odd thing was I started to dread going to work on my business on a daily basis and I couldn’t for the life of me work out why. I was so confused that I should feel this way, just as I was starting to see real success with my coaching. A few months later after several conversations with coaches and mentors of my own, I finally worked out that the success I had been experiencing had changed how I was showing up to my client calls.

Because of the higher price and higher numbers of clients, I had unconsciously started to worry about losing it all, this had made me less bold in my coaching and had brought the people pleaser out in me. Instead of challenging my clients, I was appeasing them. Of course, this felt awful and once I rectified it, I started to enjoy my clients sessions once again.

I share this example as a way to illustrate the idea that how we are showing up our work can really affect how we feel about our work. This is just one example. For you, it might be how you’re doing your marketing. See here for more on that.

Suggested action:

Open up a blank page on your computer or in a notebook and write at the top of it the following question:
Is there anything in the way I am delivering my offerings that could be contributing to the funk I am feeling?
Journal on this question until you’ve explored everything about the way in which you are showing up to and delivering your work. Given that there might be things here that you are unaware of, you might also want to consider talking it through with a business colleague, coach or mentor.

You’re feeling disillusioned with a lack of results

This is a big one. I see business owners dealing with some version of this on a regular basis. In response, I often talk about the business journey, which takes us from point A — starting our business to point B — succeeding in our business and the fact that during any time in between those 2 points, we’re likely to experience phases where we feel disillusioned or frustrated that we’re not where we want to be yet.

One antidote to this is to manage our expectations. Many of us are operating in a toxic online marketplace, where the predominant narrative is one of fast and exponential success. What I’ve realised from over 10 years of working for myself and over 6 years of supporting other business owners to succeed is that slow, incremental success is not only more realistic, but it’s also more fulfilling and long-lasting.

Suggested action:

Read this article I wrote on the pains of business growth and this article on the stages of business growth.

Next take some time to think about and question your inner dialogue about your progress. I talk to business owners all the time who are seeing results, but, because they are not as big as they want or expect, they dismiss them.

Next open up a blank page on your computer or in a notebook and write at the top of it the following question: What can I celebrate today about my business growth journey? Write down all your wins, the small and big ones — you’ll be surprised how easily we forget what is actually working when we are so focused on what is not.

So I’m curious, for those of you feeling in a funk with your business, has this helped shed any light? If so, please let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.

If you’re interested in joining an intimate group of conscious business owners in an affordable yearlong group program head here.