What to do when nothing seems to be working in your business

You've tried the launch, the workshop, the offer. You've shown up, posted, sent the emails. And somehow, it's still quiet. If you're in that season right now, wondering what you're missing, this episode of the Soul & Strategy podcast was made for you.

Listen to the full episode above or keep reading for the practical steps, the energetic check in, and the mindset shift I walk through whenever my own business hits a season like this.

Start by stepping outside the emotion

When it's your own business, your own name on the offer, it's so easy to make a quiet launch mean something about you: Not good enough. Behind schedule. Doing it wrong. Before you can actually figure out what's happening, you have to get some distance from that story.

So the first move is to look at what's actually happening from a bird's-eye view, as neutrally as possible. Not "I failed," just "here's the data, what does it tell me." That shift alone makes the next few questions far easier to answer honestly.

Look at where the bottleneck actually is

Once you're looking from that neutral place, there are a few likely places to check.

Visibility: Do enough people actually know this offer exists? An amazing workshop or package can sit quietly if the eyes simply aren't on it yet. This is often the first and simplest bottleneck to rule out.

Conversion: If plenty of people do know about it but it's still not landing, ask why. Are you reaching people who are genuinely interested, or mostly friends and family cheering you on without being your actual buyer? Support is lovely, but it's not the same as the right audience.

Offer fit: Sometimes the people are right, but the format isn't. A mum with no spare hours might love the topic but can't commit to a live event, and would say yes instantly to a short audio series she can listen to in the car. The offer itself might need to change shape, not the marketing around it.

The gap between free and paid: If people happily join your free offer but don't move into the paid one, look at whether the two are actually in alignment, and whether you clearly showed them how to continue working with you once the free thing ended.

Walk the whole journey your ideal client would take and notice where it currently breaks down. And if this isn't about a launch at all, just general growth that's stalled, the same core question still applies: what's working here, and what isn't?

Check whether you're actually behind it

Here's where it gets more interesting. Sometimes a strategy doesn't work because you're not actually behind it. If you're following someone else's blueprint because it worked for them, and it doesn't feel aligned with the business or lifestyle you actually want, your energy will quietly withdraw from it, even while you're technically doing all the right things.

I've seen this in my own business directly. I once reran a workshop that had worked well the first time, same landing page, same design, same marketing, and got zero signups. Looking back, the difference wasn't the strategy. It was me. I wasn't actually passionate about running it again, and my energy simply wasn't behind it, even though everything on the surface looked identical.

So check in honestly. How did it feel to do this, start to finish? If the answer is forced rather than aligned, that's worth paying attention to before you touch the strategy at all.

Take the pressure off

Somewhere along the way, it became normal to expect fast, visible success. Social media is full of people announcing six-figure launches within months, and it's easy to measure your first or second year against that and feel like you're falling behind.

It took me five months to land my first paying clients, and I was already working with a coach at the time. Almost everyone I've worked with needed more than a year before things really worked. There is no rush here, whatever your feed is telling you.

If money pressure is what's pushing you to force results before they're ready, it's worth considering other ways to cover that pressure: a part-time role, extra hours somewhere else, anything that takes the "this needs to work right now, or I can't pay rent" weight off your actual business. That pressure rarely produces better results. It just produces more forcing.

Shift from "nothing is working" to "this is working"

When results stall, it's easy to slide into absolutes: “Nothing is working”, “This is never going to happen”. But business, like most of life, isn't that black and white. There's almost always something working alongside whatever isn't.

So ask yourself directly: How is this already working for you?

Maybe it's working because you're learning faster than you realise. Maybe it's working because you're building real confidence every time you put yourself out there, or because one free session turned into a genuinely great result for someone.

What you focus on is what you tend to create more of, so if the only thing you're looking at is the gap, that gap is all you'll keep finding.

Remember what's already gotten you through before

One more place to look is your own history. Think back to another hard season, a breakup, a redundancy, any moment where it felt like nothing was ever going to work out again. It did work out. And whatever got you through then - a habit, a belief, simply choosing to keep going - is still available to you now.

If any of this is something you'd like support with, that's exactly the kind of work we do together inside the Soul Business Coaching Container. Book your free Soul Business Start-Up Session where we can identify the real block before you add another strategy on top, and discover how I can support you to get the results you want to create.

The truth is rarely all or nothing

So to bring it together: Step back from the emotion first, then look practically at visibility, conversion, and offer fit, check honestly whether your energy is actually behind what you're doing, take real pressure off the timeline, and notice what's already working, because it's almost never nothing.

If this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. Come tell me on Instagram @sabinelehnhardt, and if it was helpful, rate the podcast or send it to someone who needs it today.

Listen to the full episode above for the complete conversation, and follow the Soul & Strategy podcast so you don't miss what's next.

With love,

Sabine 🤍