Embracing Change: Knowing When to Pivot and Create a Nourishing, Fulfilling Business

Welcome back to another episode of the Sophie Kessner podcast. My name is Sophie and I am your host for this episode, so I want to dive into an interesting conversation, something that feels really near and dear to my heart and something that’s been a hot topic conversation amongst friends, peers and clients, and that is the conversation of knowing when something is just needing to be optimized and refined and tweaked and when to continue to push through on it Versus when something just really needs to change, when something isn’t actually the right thing for you in this season or that you’re in in your life or business, and how to know when it is time to change and what to change into Now. I apologize if my throat is a little raspy or if I take longer pauses. I’ve got a little bit of a sore throat and a little bit of a cough right now at the time of this recording, but I really wanted to get this episode created while it’s so, so deeply on my mind and on my heart. So, without being said, let’s dive in Now.
I bring up this conversation for a few reasons And if any of my clients are listening in, but the biggest thing is when we’re building businesses in the online space. It can oftentimes feel like we are in a rock and a hard place In particularly when things are not going exactly the way we want or how it would prefer. Now, this can be either either be from a botched launch, a lack of engagement, a lack of sales, a lack of momentum, and are just an overall lack of growth, or a sense of feeling stagnant in the business. And the question becomes is this a time when I just need to continue to push through and push harder, or is this a time for reflection and assessment and really taking into account what’s happening in my life and my business and if this is the right thing for me right now And then? answer is going to be different for every single person in every single circumstance. There’s not a blanket answer for that, and I think that’s important to distinguish when we’re first getting into this conversation, especially if you’re in a place right now, in your business or in your life, if you’re questioning or wondering OK, is this right for me, is this really what I want to be doing? Am I actually having doing this? Is this ever going to actually work? Because, though there is no one right answer, it is helpful to be able to sit with and discern for yourself if what you’re doing and what you’re creating is the thing that you actually want to be doing and want to be creating, or if there’s something better out there for you to be doing, and that might not be a forever thing, it might be a right now thing, but to discern that so that you can build something that’s actually going to work right.
A big part of this podcast and a big part of my brand is the conversation of sustainability and equity. When we’re thinking about sustainability and equity in business, we have to look at this to the lens of can I actually manage and maintain the energy and the input to continue to grow this thing over an extended period of time, or can I only do this for a short period of time before I burn out or get exhausted or get tired or quit? Now, if the answer to that is the latter, then it’s probably not the thing for you, or the way that you’re doing it might not be the most optimal way to do it, because if it can’t be sustained over an extended period of time, then there’s no point in really approaching it through that lens, unless it’s intentionally being curated in that way to where okay, for a short period of time I’m going to go at this level of intensity until I hit this level of growth or this level of size or momentum, and then I’m going to slow it down, i’m going to shift right. But in this conversation, what we’re talking about is you’ve been at that for a while, you’ve been putting in the effort, you’ve been putting in the growth and you’ve hit what would feel like a bit of a plateau, where things are slowing down or things are shifting, or you just don’t feel the same sense of connection or aliveness or excitement or joy or just contentment with what it is that you’re doing in the world.
Now, some signs of this might include feeling a bit of overwhelm with what it is that you’re doing in your life or business, feeling a big sense of procrastination when it comes to either marketing or talking about your services, or trying to enroll clients or considering the idea of making sales online or in person, and everything just feels like it’s an uphill battle. It feels like it’s so much harder than it has been before, and a big part of this is just your sense of oh my gosh, i’m really exhausted, i’m really tired by this. There’s an overall sense of fatigue or just disinterest in the thing. Now, if this is you, you are definitely not alone, and this is such a beautiful opportunity for reflection. So if you found yourself on this episode, i’m really, really glad you’re here Now.
The other part of this is when you feel a deep sense of connection and passion and excitement to what you’re doing, but it’s not taking off the way that you want it to. There’s a sense of frustration with that, and the felt sense experience of it when you’re in this scenario is you’re really trying, you’re really committed to it, but at the same time, it feels like no matter how much energy you put into it or no matter how hard you try, or no matter what you do, it’s just not working the way that you want it to, and it can feel a bit disheartening. It can feel like it’s a bit disappointing, like there’s a sense of frustration or annoyance, or wondering if or when it will ever actually get to the point that you want it to, and questioning things. A lot of doubt comes in here. Now, these are similar flavors, but different, as you can likely already start to tell, as we’re picking these apart And what I’m going to invite you to do is just get a sense of where you feel like you’re at in your life or your business right now, and it might be a combination of both, it might be one or the other, it might be something completely different. But what I really want to bring into the conversation is if any of these experiences are present to you and you’re finding yourself in that place of questioning, wondering is this the right thing? Do I keep going? Do I shift, do I pivot To really sit down and reflect Really, get clear on what feels true for me in this moment and consistently in every moment over the last few weeks or months, because it’s one thing to feel a certain way during a certain time of the month or a certain time of the week or when there’s something just really stressful happening, and it’s another thing to have a pattern of consistently feeling this specific type of thing.
Now, i bring this up because part of what I personally have to deal with, and what a few clients that might also navigate, is this thing called premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Now, this is something that I didn’t get diagnosed with until after I had my son And essentially what PMDD is is right around the time before my period, so about a week before, my hormones change quite exponentially And it creates this huge sense of emotion and this feeling of like just being overwhelmed with it all and feeling like, okay, there’s just can’t really think. Everything feels really intense, i feel very sensitive and I’m contemplating my entire existence and like, and every single month on repeat, like clockwork, i will go through what I call my mid-cycle, mid-life crisis, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Instead of a mid-life crisis, it’s my mid-cycle crisis, so similar to a mid-life crisis. I am questioning everything, but I have it every single cycle at the same time, every month, and I have learned that, okay, during that time, i’m in a season of doubt, i’m in a season of inquiry, i’m in a season of questioning and wondering and feeling that distrust or that just lack of excitement and things.
And what I’ve also assessed for myself in this process is during that time, my emotions are intensified, they’re amplified, right, i’m feeling a lot more because there’s a lot more hormones in my body And it tends to do a few things for me. One it helps me become more very obviously aware of what I’m actually feeling, and oftentimes the thing is that when I’m not as hormonally elevated, i may put those feelings to the side, i may not look at them as clearly or as potently, i may just brush them off. But when I get to the season of my cycle, i can’t even know what I’m feeling anymore And the feelings are really, really intense. So for me it becomes a season of okay, let me really sit with this And instead of making decisions in those moments, what I do is I’ll sit with it and I’ll write it down, i’ll note it for myself and I’ll continue to come back to that thing and see throughout the rest of my cycle if I’m still feeling the same way, if that question, if that insecurity, if that doubt, if that uncertainty, if that wondering if that inclination, that impulse is still there consistently throughout the entirety of my cycle. And I bring this out because most folks that I work with tend to be women or female-bodied and hormones for such an important part of the conversation. Because, even if you don’t have the extreme side of something like PMDD, there is a natural fluctuation of hormones every single month, regardless of where you are in the menstruation stages, whether you’re naturally menstruating, whether you’re in perimenopause or menopause, and it’s important to understand the patterns that are happening throughout your cycle, in your monthly process and in the business, because we want to make sure that when we’re making decisions in our business, we’re not just making them from a place where we’re highly emotional, but we want to make sure we’re making decisions in our business from a place to where we’ve collected a lot of the information about how we’re feeling and it’s a consistent feeling, so we can make a really well-informed decision, especially if it’s going to be a big decision about your business and about your life. Right, because you wouldn’t necessarily have the business if it wasn’t enacting the entirety of your life. So what I want to speak into here is the conversation of what to do in these moments.
Now, if you’re in a place right now where you’re questioning and you’re wondering, i don’t know if this is it, i don’t know if this is the thing that I should be doing, i’d like you to really sit with that, to really sit with what about the way that you’re doing things right now? isn’t feeling good, isn’t feeling nourishing, isn’t feeling supportive? Is it just that it’s really overwhelming and there’s a lot of things happening right now in your life and that’s what’s making it feel exhausting? Are there specific things that, if you didn’t have to do them and then if you could change them or automate them or delegate them, it would be a lot better. Or is it specifically the thing that you’re doing that doesn’t actually feel good for you to do anymore?
And I’m not saying to jump ship and completely pivot and switch gears overnight, but what I am saying is to take inventory, take note of the things that are not feeling quite right for you, because one of the double-edged swords in entrepreneurship is recognizing that we both get to have the incredible power of creating whatever we want, but also the incredible responsibility of reconciling with whatever we’re experiencing. We created it, and what I mean when I say that is, if you’re not happy with the business you’ve built, you’re the one who built it and you’ve built it the way that you’ve built it. That can feel a little daunting at first to take on, but it can also be incredibly liberating when you recognize that if you’re the one who put yourself there, you can also take yourself out of it. You can also change your situation. So it’s sitting with this piece of am I actually happy with what I’ve created and how I’m running it and how I’m doing things are?
Is this not actually the way that I want to be doing. It Is the thing itself, not actually the thing that I’m happy doing, and I’ve created it in this way to try to appease others or try to fit into a certain box or a certain narrative, or how I’m supposed to be doing things, or what other people are saying or my circles are saying, or what’s popular or what’s trendy, and it doesn’t actually feel good or true for you. And that might just be a certain part of what you’re doing. It might be the entire thing of what you’re doing. It might just be that you’re doing things you don’t necessarily want to be doing, and so what I like to sit with, and the question that I like to ask here, if this is the situation that you’re in, is what would actually feel really good and nourishing for me If I was doing this all for free? what would I be doing? How would I be spending my time? What would feel really good? What are the things that I’d love to be spending hours on?
And, on the other end of that, one of the things that I absolutely hate, that if I couldn’t, if I didn’t have to do them, i just wouldn’t, whether it’s working with specific clients, whether it’s doing specific tasks in the business, whether it’s dealing with certain projects. What are the things that I really resist, the things that I procrastinate on the most, the things that I just don’t enjoy, and are they something that’s actually mandatory to the business, or is it something that I can just eliminate from it? If it’s not something I can eliminate, is it something I can delegate or automate? Now, obviously, depending on where you are in your life, in your business, certain options may or may not be available. If you’re in the earlier stages, it might not be an option for you to hire somebody to help you out with certain things. So is it possible to automate it or to eliminate it or to minimize it as much as possible so that you’re not having to spend your time and energy doing certain things?
Now, i bring this up because, again, we have to start to think about what it is that we’re creating for ourselves And if we are actually enjoying the thing that we’re creating. Because if you don’t actually enjoy what it is you’re building, you are setting yourself up for a painful, painful process trying to push past every part of you that doesn’t actually want what’s on the other end of the thing, that you’re convincing yourself you need to do Now I’m gonna say that one more time. If what you’re creating isn’t something that you actually want, but you are continuing to push yourself to do the things that you don’t necessarily want to do but you’ve convinced yourself you have to do to get to a place that you don’t even necessarily want to be, it’s going to be an incredibly painful process, which is why we don’t just go and start building things and creating things to do them. We wanna focus first on where do we actually wanna go? Where do we actually wanna be? How do we actually want to feel in our lives and in our businesses, and what does that look like? What are the things that would feel nourishing in that process, and what are the things that would feel exhausting, that feel like they’re such hard and heavy work?
Now, i’m not saying that you’re not ever gonna have to do things that you don’t enjoy doing, but what I am saying is how can you make the things that you don’t enjoy doing worthwhile with everything else that you’re creating? Meaning, if you really hate ad-bin work and you hate doing your numbers at the end of the month, or you hate doing taxes, like I think every person ever does. How do you build a business in a way that the taxes are worth doing every single year To where it’s not fun per se, but it’s worth it because you enjoy what you get to do throughout the entirety of the year. It’s fun for you, you love having the team, and I think this is an interesting conversation because a lot of the times we can get stuck in the mechanics of building and growing and scaling, that we get lost in the process And we forget to connect to our sense of purpose, our sense of belonging, our sense of joy, our sense of fulfillment, and we lose ourselves inside of it.
Now, this can go on both ends of the spectrum. You can lose yourself in the process of trying to grow something really, really big or, on the other end, you can lose yourself in the experience of feeling things that you completely neglect the growth and the structure of development of the business. Regardless of what side of the pendulum you’re on there, the goal is to find balance, to find a sense of harmony there in the middle and find your rhythm right And it’s not that you’re always going to live in it, but you can find your way back to it to harmonize The way in which you’re living your life and building the business and growing the business so that it does feel good and nourishing for you. Now let’s say that this is less of a query of I’m just feeling exhausted with the way that I’m doing things and more of a query of I don’t actually know if this is the right thing for me to be doing Now. This can show up in a few different ways. Maybe you’ve been at it for years and you’ve been building a program or building a service or building a business for years on end. Or this could be that perhaps you’re just getting started and you haven’t quite had the success that you were hoping for. Or it could be that perhaps you’ve started something new and it’s just not clicking. It’s not working the way that you would hope it would.
Now, depending on how you feel about the thing, is gonna dictate if pivoting really is the right choice. So the first question that we have to ask is one do you actually enjoy the thing that you’re trying to do? Is what you’re building, something that is actually going to feel exciting or nourishing or rejuvenating or worth it for you to build? If you were to do it for free, the rest of your life? would you enjoy it? If the answer to that is no, then we probably wanna rethink what it is that you’re doing Now. If the answer to that is an astonishing yes, fantastic then the question becomes how do we actually make this more enjoyable for the process of it? And that might be the conversation of it’s the marketing that’s exhausting? it’s the sales process that’s exhausting? it’s the admin that’s exhausting? You find what the pieces are that don’t feel nourishing for you and you adjust to those to be more supportive for you, if you’re finding it.
Interesting example I’ll say for this is you know, i have a client who has a fairly large audience on social media, pretty big following, and she had been trying, or they’d been trying, for a few months to try to get something off the ground and get it rolling, but it just wasn’t landing in the same way, it wasn’t hitting in the same way and it wasn’t growing the way that they wanted it to, and there was a bit of frustration with that. There was a lot of resistance around it. There was a lot of frustration around it and it just not working. And we sat down with it and we had a conversation of is this the thing that you actually want to be doing. Is this the thing that you enjoy? And their answer was it was the client delivery part that they enjoyed the least. It was the thing that they had to be doing on a daily or a weekly basis. That felt really exhausting.
For them to say, okay, well, the client delivery is the problem, then we need to change what it is you’re delivering to clients, because the more that we try to force the marketing and the sales process for this, the more that you’re going to resist it and you’re going to be burning yourself out in the process of trying to build this thing that you don’t even necessarily want to build, because the thing that you’re building is what’s also depleting you, and the bigger that grows, the more it’s going to deplete you. So it makes sense that you’re not trying to make this work. And so they shifted. They shifted from something that was very traditional in the coaching industry and very common to a business model that made a lot more sense for them but was completely contradictory to everything that industry norms teach and talk about. But in that pivot, in that shift from them, they started to experience a renewed sense of excitement, of joy, of enthusiasm that came back into their life and their feeling to their business and through that they started to shift what the deliverables were, to be more supportive for how they wanted to feel and what they wanted to do, and in that process things started to work in a different way. Now they’re still fairly early on in the pivot and in the shift and then that transition, and that’s okay.
But I bring this up to say a lot of the times we are questioning if the thing that we’re doing is actually the thing that we want to be doing, and a lot of the times it might very well be the thing that we want, but the way we’re approaching it isn’t actually fun for us. For most folks, it’s the exhaustion with the marketing, it’s the exhaustion with the sales process, and those are easy fixes. Right, you have this thing that you really love doing, but we got to change the way that you market and we’ve got to change the way that you sell. Now, for some of you, it might just be that you were burnt out, are you exhausted, are you’ve outgrown the thing that you’re actually delivering to clients, and in those scenarios, these are the times when it’s important for us to consider the potential of pivoting and shifting what it is that we’re doing in our lives and in our businesses to create something that’s going to feel so much more nourishing for us.
Because if we have a product or a service that we don’t enjoy, that we don’t actually want to be doing, but we’re trying to scale it, because we’re trying to convince ourselves that this is the thing that we need to do, and it’s going to be an uphill battle and it is going to be a long road of pain and misery and frustration to burn out. I can say that firsthand, but also in second hand in many, many ways, because we get caught up in the narrative of needing to grow and needing to scale, needing to do the thing. But in reality, we also have to make sure that the thing that we’re doing is the thing that we enjoy, because if we don’t, we’ll go to resent the business, regardless of how much money the business makes, and I’ve seen this with peers, with friends, with colleagues, with mentors. So the first thing that we have to do in this process number one is get to know ourselves, get to figure out who we are and what we actually enjoy and what would actually feel really good and really nourishing for us to build and for us to run, for us to create.
It might be exactly what you’re doing or it might be something completely different, and oftentimes, when it’s something that’s completely different, that’s the part that’s really freaking scary, because the thing that’s different requires an entire shift in identity and who you believe you are and what’s possible for you in the way that you present yourself to the world, and that can feel really confronting, potentially really dangerous, really threatening, depending on your lived experience. Especially if you’ve had success in the thing that you’ve been doing, there is a potential of failure, there’s a potential of it not working and the risk feels a lot bigger and a lot higher. So you’re questioning it, you’re doubting it even more, especially if the thing that you’ve been doing has been successful, it’s worked, and you’re talking about pivoting into something that is new territory. That part is likely the scariest and most intimidating piece of the conversation, of making a pivot in your business, and I want to speak to that because I don’t think we give it enough love and attention and support. When we’re talking about shifting our business, yes, there’s a big part of you want it to feel good, but also there’s the fear that comes with shifting into something that feels really good and the grief of letting go of something that no longer feels right for you.
And I want to talk about this in the parallel of relationships, because it’s similar to ending a relationship with a partner or a person who was a great partner. They were a great partner and at one point you really, really loved that person. But at this point you recognize that you’ve grown apart. And you can see this in the same way in business. You might have had a business or a service or an offer or a program or a business model or a structure or a brand identity that at one point was just everything you ever wanted and more. But over time you’ve grown apart from it, you’ve evolved past it, you’ve shifted beyond what it could hold you in. It just doesn’t have the same level of depth, it couldn’t keep up. It just isn’t who you are anymore. And that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t real. But what it does mean is we get to grieve the loss of that relationship, the loss of that business, the loss of that model. We get to transition out of that.
And there is a little bit of that man what if I can never find somebody better or something just as great. But, as one of my OG mentors, scott Olford, had said way back in the day, you don’t deserve what’s good, you deserve what’s phenomenal, and we don’t want to settle for good in our businesses. We don’t want to settle for good in our lives. We want a phenomenal life, we want a phenomenal business And we want something that’s going to feel so, so good for us to create and to build and to run. And so, as you’re grieving the shift and the loss of the business and everything that it was and that it meant for you, you’re also building and nurturing and growing something that’s going to feel even more aligned And there’s a sense of excitement in that. So it’s prepping yourself for that process of holding the both and the grief and the excitement, the fear and the joy, the sense of questioning, but also the sense of certainty and knowing that that is a natural part of the process. And the part that’s going to anchor you through this is you having certainty in what feels most nourishing for you and what has felt most true for you consistently over an extended period of time.
And that, my friends, is the conversation of making a big, big pivot in your business, making a big shift in your business. It is definitely no easy task And I have so much admiration for the folks in the industry and in just in life in general, who make these big shifts, who transition from one industry to a completely different industry or one career to a completely different career, because it’s no easy task. It’s no easy task to deal with the repercussions that come with it, but if it brings a deeper sense of aliveness, of happiness, of joy, of connection, and those are the things that you truly value, i think that’s how you know it’s worth it. So, all that to be said, if you enjoyed today’s episode, please feel free to like, save, share and subscribe, and if you have any feedback for us, i would love, love, love to hear it. You can send all emails to hay at thesacredco And if there is one thing that you could do, if you wanted to share a little bit of love and appreciation, as you can, leave us a review on your favorite podcast player, whether that’s Apple Podcast, spotify, etc.
It means the world to us. It gets this podcast ranking and gets it into the ears of more folks who get to hear it. So thank you for being here, thank you for listening in. If you are on this process or on this journey, i am here with you and I’m feeling you and I am holding you in what is on the other side. All right, y’all, i will see you on the next episode.