Are You Done or Just Discouraged?

A few months ago, one of my clients told me she was about six months away from shutting down her business and going back to a W-2 job.

And I don’t mean that in the vague “business is hard” way people say when they’re having a rough week and need a nap, a snack, or possibly a full cry-it-out reset (I had one of those just last week and it really felt truly amazing).

I mean, she was truly looking at the numbers, looking at the energy it was taking, looking at what had changed in her industry, and asking the question a lot of business owners eventually ask… “Is this still going to work?”

Her name is Meredith, and when she first came into my world, she was not lacking experience, intelligence, or skill. She runs a market research business, which means her entire work is built around helping companies understand real humans. Actual people, not industry assumptions or whatever the mobs on social media threads collectively decided was a “trend” this week.

But her business had taken hits. COVID changed things. Her health challenges changed things. Most importantly, the market had shifted with more companies starting to try DIY research, and AI added a whole new layer of noise to an industry that already required a lot of education and trust.

So by the time we talked, she was tired.

And when you are tired for long enough, it becomes very easy to misdiagnose the problem.

You start thinking the business is broken when it might actually be the visibility rhythm, the follow-up process, or the daily actions that are not supporting the business well enough to let it work.

And I think it’s important to acknowledge there is a difference because there are absolutely times when someone is on the wrong path. I am not saying every offer should be dragged around till it’s lifeless like a husband in Hobby Lobby (ask me how I know 😉).

Some things need to be released, refined, or retired and that is totally fine.

But I think there are far more business owners who abandon the right path too soon because they are worn down from doing a lot of work that is not the right work (again, ask me how I know!! 😬)

That is where Meredith was.

She had experience and people in her world who could become opportunities, but there was not a clean enough system helping her manage leads, follow-ups, priorities, positioning, and the actual “what do I do today?” part of running the business.

And if you have ever had three different lists of a handful of warm leads you keep meaning to follow up with (and one very optimistic plan from two Tuesdays ago), you know exactly how fast that gets messy!

But last week, Meredith was on one of our weekly program implementation calls, and the difference in her voice was soooooo clear.

She sounded excited. Not fake-excited or “I read a motivational quote and now I’m pretending I’m fine” excited, but steady, grounded, “I can see where this is going now” excited.

She had a back-to-school entry-level offer that had moved from a pitch into a real opportunity being taken to the prospect’s boss. She was using the CEO weekly rhythm, getting clearer on what needed her attention on the daily, and treating her AI tools more like support instead of another thing to manage.

That did not happen because she changed everything overnight. It happened because she started taking the right actions consistently, and her CEO Dashboard gave her a practical way to use the systems we built: tracking leads, following up, planning the week, and deciding what needed her attention next.

Before You Blame the Path

This is the part I want you to take back to your own business, because Meredith’s story is not unique and it’s not really about the dashboard we built for her.

Listen, Notion is not magic. No tool is. The difference comes from how you use it, what systems you build around it, and whether those systems help you take the right actions when life throws you a curveball and things get HARD.

And business turnaround usually does not come from one giant breakthrough. It usually comes from getting honest about what action is actually missing, then repeating that action long enough for the business to respond.

Sometimes it is choosing a clearer offer. Sometimes it is getting consistent with follow-up. And sometimes it is creating a weekly rhythm so the right actions are easier to see, easier to repeat, and a whole lot harder to lose in the middle of an already-full week.

So before you decide the path is wrong, I want you to slow down long enough to check the action.

Not in a “question every decision you’ve ever made and spiral for three business days” kind of way. More like a clean CEO check-in where you stop letting discouragement make the decision before the data has had a chance to speak.

Because if you want clients, but you are mostly nurturing instead of making clear invitations, that is not a “broken business” problem; it’s an action mismatch.

If you want better leads, but you are showing up in rooms where your best-fit people are not actually paying attention OR using messaging that is speaking to the wrong people all together, that is not proof that nobody wants what you do; that’s a visibility and positioning problem.

And if you want more consistency, but your weekly plan is split between your calendar, three sticky notes, a half-finished task list, and the notes app you only open when you are already annoyed, then the issue may not be your capacity. It may be that your business does not have a clean enough rhythm to help you follow through.

This is why the next step is not always “try harder.”

Sometimes the next step is to get more honest about what is actually missing, then make that one thing easier to implement and repeat.

Weekly Challenge

This week, I want you to do a “don’t quit yet” audit.

Ask yourself:

1. What is working, even if it is working slower than I wanted?
2. What is not working, and have I been honest about why?
3. Is this the wrong business, offer, or path… or am I missing the right system?
4. Where am I winging it instead of taking one clear, repeatable action?

If you want a little AI-inspired help with this audit, head over to the Notion AI Skool community, where I will have prompts waiting for you to help you work through this audit with AI and turn your answers into a practical next step.

Once you have your answers, pick one place where you are currently improvising and make it simpler. That could be your follow-up process, your sales invitations, your visibility rhythm, your weekly planning, or the way you decide what deserves your attention first.

You do not need to overhaul your whole business by Friday. You just need to notice where the action you keep taking is not the action the result actually requires, and then commit to one better action long enough to see what happens.

Revolutionary, I know, and very upsetting when you were hoping the answer was “buy a prettier planner and emotionally recover by Monday,” and I know this from my own business too!

In Q1, I had demand building, conversations happening, and people telling me how helpful my work was, results of all the actions I had been taking for months…BUT it was not turning into clients the way I expected.

During a whine fest on one of the calls, my coach bluntly asked me how many people I was directly inviting to work with me, and the answer was basically “not enough, thank you for this deeply inconvenient observation.”

So in April, instead of revamping my entire offer or rebuilding my website, I simply focused on directly inviting warm leads into the next right step. By changing the actions I was taking, it became the highest revenue month I have had in four years of business.

Moral of the story: I did not need a completely different path. I needed to stop avoiding the action that actually matched the outcome I wanted.

And if you want to reply to this email and tell me where you feel like your systems are breaking down, I will definitely reply and if I have a quick idea for how to make that area cleaner or easier to act on, I will share it!

Sometimes you do need to change paths, but before you abandon this one, make sure you have given the right actions a fair shot.