Have you ever worked on something in our business that took awfully long to bring results you expected?
So long, in fact, that you were ready to quit a couple of times, but your gut was telling you to keep going? And then when the breakthrough came, you were sooo grateful that you did!
Or on the flip side, did you work on something for soo long without ANY results that you wished you stopped it and pivoted sooner? Because it would have saved you lots of time, stress and money?
Being an entrepreneur, a creative being that tries new strategies regularly isn’t easy. Sometimes our ideas work instantly. While others need time to mature, flower, and bear fruit. And sometimes it’s best just to let them go.
The trick is to know when. And that’s a challenge for many entrepreneurs. Here are five signs that can help you pause and determine whether it’s time to keep going, pivot, or let it go.
1. Your marketing efforts bring no or minimal results.
Depending on whether you’re running a paid advertising campaign or soft organic marketing, the results need a different length of time to materialize. It’s good to understand that and align your expectations with it.
For example, if you’ve done market research and your offering is viable for sale, paid advertising should bring you some results within days. If it doesn’t, it’s time to pause and see what should be tweaked and adjusted. Might be in your copy, landing page, audience targeting, etc.
Organic content marketing, on the other hand, intends to build an audience first and then softly sell, which takes much longer to bear fruit. Here your first gage can be the engagement of your audience. If that’s working well, then it’s only a matter of time for them to buy your offering.
On the flip side, if no matter what you post and do, you hear crickets, then it’s time pause. Either tweak and improve or let it go and replace it with a new one.
2. When you’re not clear on what problems you solve
As an entrepreneur, through your offering, you help people solve problems or reach goals they have (or both). To do that, you also need to know whom you’re helping. Trying to solve all the problems for everyone is not a good marketing strategy. Why? That’s a conversation we can have over a free virtual coffee chat ;).
So, if you’re not clear on any of this, it means you’re not ready to market your product or services. And in case you’ve started and not seeing any results, that’s your queue to stop, get the clarity first, and only then resume your marketing.
3. Your gut is telling you this is not right for you.
Pushing yourself out of the comfort zone to grow as an entrepreneur and listening to your gut when not to do something because it’s not right are two different things. The key for you is to know the difference.
Usually, when we’re going in the right direction, we’re super excited and feel expanded about doing things in our business. Yes, we might feel scared at the same time because we’ve never done it before. That’s our comfort zone speaking. In this scenario, your job is to take the smallest viable step towards your goal and do it! Through baby steps and small wins, you’ll slowly gain confidence, 100%!
On the other hand, when you’ve adopted a strategy in your business that’s not getting you results and the more you try, the less comfortable it feels, that might be your gut telling you it’s not the right strategy. Take the time to pause and listen to it.
Because there are MANY strategies for you to choose from when it comes to running your business. So pick those that feel natural, that make you feel expanded rather than contracted. I promise you; you’ll get much better results with such a shift.
5. You feel like you’re burning out.
When we’re doing things that don’t bring us joy, help us grow, or fill us with passion, working becomes soul depleting. And if we spend A LOT of time on those things, we get stressed out, tired, and overwhelmed. If your business is becoming a chore where you’re just working crazy hours, burning out with no visible results, it’s time to call it quits.
STOP. Reassess, see what’s happening and why (you might need someone else to tell you that) so that you can escape the hamster wheel. Once you know what and why things aren’t working, pick a direction that will expand and energize you. And you’ll see, the results will follow.
5. Even though you’re selling, your profits are low.
As the CEO of your business, your ultimate goal is to make a profit. If you’re starting, then yes, making losses is OK because you’re probably investing to get your business off the ground. At some point, though, it needs to start bringing in the money to support itself and you.
So if you’re in a time when you should be profitable but aren’t, then it’s definitely the time to reassess your offering structure, pricing, sales and marketing, and make proper strategy changes. If you do it early in the game, you’ll have a chance to save your business rather than let it go.
Now, before we part our ways, let me offer some help.
Because I didn’t write this article only to point out where you might have a problem. If you’re reading this and thinking OMG, Maggie, I do see some of these signs in my business, and clearly, I need to pause, then let’s chat.
For FREE, I can help you figure out where exactly you have an issue and why. Once you know that, you can then decide whether you’ll fix it alone or with my help. How does it sound to you?
All you need to do to book a free strategy session with me by clicking here and picking a time that works for you 😊.
