Business Evolution: How to know when to let go

You know that quiet whisper that keeps nudging you…

“This offer isn’t it anymore.”

“This business model feels heavy.”

“This chapter is complete.”

In today’s raw and real episode, I’m sharing the behind-the-scenes of a big decision I just made in my own business which I will announce when I am ready. 

Yep, I’m right in the middle of it with you.

The fear.

The shame.

The “WTF are you doing?!” voice in my head.

And the grounded knowing in my heart that… this is the right next move.

If you’ve ever wondered how to know when it’s time to let go, without sabotaging your momentum or making a panic decision, this episode is going to feel like a warm permission slip.

Because when you release what’s no longer aligned, the magic you make space for? It’s bigger than you imagined. If you are a course creator who is ready to turn her courses into passive sales machines so you can ditch the live launch rollercoaster, then grab my Daily Sales Guide. It will show you how to start selling every day with ease and alignment. Click HERE to grab it for FREE.

Transcript

0:05

Welcome to the Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit, and I'm an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love. If you are looking to uplevel your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator and business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you. To play bigger with your life and go after your dreams. We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in. Hello, beautiful soul. It is Michelle here, and today's episode is for the woman who is feeling a little bit off in her business. So maybe you've built something, maybe it's a signature course, maybe it's a group program, or maybe it's your entire business model. And even though it's working on paper. Inside, you're just not feeling lit up by it anymore, and you may even be dreading doing the work and it's just weighing on you. Now i've been going through this for a while, I think maybe even a year over a year. So I really felt called to share this message. And so this episode is going to walk you through how to know when it's time to actually release something, when it's time to close the chapter. Retire the offer. Let go without sabotaging your success or doing something drastic or impulsive because, that can happen. You may be misreading it for boredom and sometimes business is going to feel a bit boring sometimes, but being able to discern whether this is just a bit of boredom or whether this is actually misalignment and where you need to let go. And if we don't let go, the suffering increases and continues. So that is what I'm going to jam on today. Now here's the thing, business is not a one track career path, especially if you're a woman in business, say you starting your business, at 30 years old and you ending your business at, 65 years old, the likelihood of that being the same business, the exact same niche, the same whatever, is just very, very unlikely. And so, business is not a linear one track career path where you just choose your niche and you ride that train forever. It evolves as you evolve. And if you're listening to this. There's maybe a good chance that you have been feeling that you have evolved and your business hasn't evolved with you. And so you have this niggle inside. You know that one where it's this little whisper inside that's just like, this doesn't feel as good as it used to anymore. Or the moment a client messages you and instead of feeling like expanded and excited or good, there's a low key irritation or maybe a bit of resentment or a bit of a weird energy to it, or the thoughts of you having to launch a program again, something that you launched a lot and you just feel this contracted feeling in your body and it's like, oh, I don't want to do this. So these are signs. These are signs that there is. Misalignment here. And you don't want to ignore it for too long. Because if you do ignore it for a long time, those whispers become screams and you ultimately will self-sabotage and do something that. Ends the offer or does something bad, which is not what you want. You want to be quite conscious of the fact that misalignment is happening so that you can course correct versus, holding on for dear life, staying in the same thing because it's comfortable and then something bad happening. There's so many weird sabotages that can happen that you wouldn't want to go through, right? So I have been going through this, navigating this in my business. For a while, I'm talking like over a year or so, I have been sitting with this identity death. And since moving to Portugal, this identity death has accelerated by a million fold. And really everything that I wanted, have been doing in my business has been crumbling, and the misalignment is so loud that I've had to really pay attention. I've been holding on for too long because it was comfortable. And I have come to a point in my journey where the discomfort of holding on is way bigger than the discomfort of just making changes. And literally just this week. It was two days ago, I made a decision that was very significant for my business, which was a decision of letting go of something that was a really massive part of my business for the last four or five years. And I spoke to Mike about it. I spoke to my sister about it and. I had this feeling they're going to be like, what is wrong with you? You're crazy. And surprisingly they supported me in the decision and I realized that if I'm following my intuition and my energy and my heart, then this is going to be the right decision and that's what I've been doing. My hearts is saying something, my mind is saying something else. But for me, you always want to follow the heart and the intuition that's going to help you build a business that's sustainable, soul aligned, that's not going to feel like nails to your soul. And I must say prior to making this decision, there was so much suffering. It felt so draining. I felt so exhausted, like trying to figure it out. But the moment I made the decision, there was this great sense of relief, like my whole body exhaled. And the pain of being in between, the half in half out, you're not really sure. So you're just straddling both options like that in between. That was worse than the feeling of making the decision. And don't get me wrong, there've been so many feelings. I've been feeling fear. Am I making the right decision? I've been feeling shame. Maybe this wasn't part of the plan or the vision that I had. I've had excitement because what's waiting for me on the other side, that lights me up. The fact that I don't even know exactly what it is excites me. And there's this tug of war between my head and my heart. So the logic is saying one thing, the heart of saying another. But as I said, if you want to build a sustainable business as a woman. You've got to be following the heart because the head, it's going to be loud. It's going to try keep you safe. It's going to think logically, but the intuition and what you are meant to do with your life and the path your soul is meant to go on, it's not logical. Often it is quite illogical and it's very much comes through as a grounded whisper. And that grounded whisper, that sort of inner mentor that you have, that intuition that you have. It doesn't lie. It never lies. And if you pay attention to it, and you listen to it and you follow it, it will guide you where you want to go. It'll bring you everything you want and more, but you've got to listen to it. You got to lean into it. And I've done this before. In 2020, I had a version of my business and I had an offer that was making six figures. And I had a huge launch, I had a$40,000 launch, and right after that launch I was like, I'm never launching that course again. And I remember Mike was like, you're crazy. Why would you do this? It's finally working so well. And I was like, this just doesn't feel good to myself. I don't like it, I don't want to deliver it, and I don't want to do it anymore. And then I did the illogical thing. I closed it off and when I closed it off, I had created this space for Digiteachers Biz Academy to be born, which was my most magnificent signature program that I've had for the last five years. And had I not listened to my heart and shut off that first version of my business, I would never have been able to create the next most incredible version. I've seen it time and time again. When you follow your gut, your intuition, even if it feels illogical, it's going to get you, it's going to guide you to magical things that you don't even realize how magical they are. So how do we know we're not sabotaging ourselves and being irrational and doing something that's very bad, right? So let's talk about the messy middle, the gray zone between, I'm not sure I'm tolerating this and I'm going or I'm going to let it go. So you're like, I can keep going, I can tolerate it, I can do it for a bit longer. That's option one. And the other option is, I'm going to let it go. And you're stuck between these two options. Now what happens is when you think about letting something go in your business that is maybe making a lot of money or making a lot of sense. It's been supporting you, whatever it may be. When you think about closing that off or letting it go, your ego will go wild. Your mind will be like, are you crazy? You've worked so hard for this. What if you never make money again? People are going to think you failed. All of these weird thoughts come up. So how do you know if you are making a wise, grounded, soul led decision? And that you're not just sabotaging your growth out of boredom, because sometimes business gets boring and you feel like you want to just change it up. And so you want to just burn everything down to the ground. I see this all the time, and often it's a case of just a bit of boredom and it's not really a case of this is actually a deeply aligned decision. So here are a few check-in questions that I've leaned on that you can lean on too. So have I given this offer or this thing, enough time and energy to grow? Am I changing direction because I'm scared or bored or because I'm feeling called into my next evolution. Is there a calling that's pulling me into my next level, or am I making this decision because I'm bored? When I imagine my business five years from now, does this thing, the offer, the model, the partner that you're working with, does this thing still have a place? Does it expand me or does this constrict me? So when you think of the trajectory of your business five years from now, and you think about continuing with what you're doing the way it is. Does that feel expansive in your body or does that feel constricting? And that's going to tell you if it's something for you. So if you're expanding, then that's a yes. And if you're constricting. Then that's a no. The next question is, am I closing this from a place of groundedness or am I being impulsive? Am I feeling burnt out in other areas of my business? Look at that, because sometimes you can be burnt out from social media marketing, and you just suddenly think you need to go and burn your business down to the ground or retire and offer out of that reason. Or is it a place of I'm grounded, I'm very much centered and this feels right to me. So the big thing is, is that the decision needs to be calm, it needs to be grounded, it needs to be thought over and processed. And it's likely going to be very, very scary, making the decision. That is commonly what happens when you're following your intuition. It feels very scary. So if you're feeling very frantic, erratic, I want to burn everything down feeling. Like nothing's working, then me just burn it all down to the ground. Then that could be a self-sabotage. Or if you're feeling bored, that could be a self-sabotage and you're looking for excitement, then you're trying to find it through your business versus just going and finding it in your life and keeping your business stable. So there's definitely a difference. Feel into your body how it feels and definitely pay attention to your inner whisper and your intuition. So here's the part no one talks about, letting go on purpose of something that's in your business that may have been working or is currently still working really well is one of the most powerful business moves you can make if it's aligned. Not because it's easy, but because it is so brave, so courageous. And it creates space. When you create space in your business, if you, especially if you're misaligned and things aren't feeling good, when you retire something or let something go or close something off, you create space. And that space is like this incredible vortex. It's like the sacred space that new energy can come into. For example, when I stopped selling that ESL course, as soon as I did that, I birthed DBA and that was just the most incredible experience of my life. So when you create space, you create space to breathe, you gain capacity, you create space to dream again, and the creativity just comes through. And that's a thing, if you're forcing something and your nervous system and your soul and your heart knows that you're forcing something. And you're clinging to a chapter that should technically end, then it's going to become louder and louder. The scream, that whisper's going to turn into a loud scream, and you're going to have to listen to it. So if you're feeling like something's off and it's been off for a long time, then pay attention to that. There's a good chance you need to let go of what no longer fits, and that does not mean failure. It means courage, wisdom. That's a boss, CEO move. That means you are powerful, you are brave, and you trust yourself. You trust yourself enough to let go of something, to make space for the new, and you know that you're going to create magic on the other side of that decision. So think of letting go of something in your business like pruning a tree. You're not killing the tree when you're pruning the tree or the plant. You're literally just creating space for the new season of growth. So if this has been resonating with you. Let me leave you with a few rituals to help you move through this season of letting go in your business. Which I'm definitely going to do a couple of these things, but one thing is writing a thank you letter to whatever it is that you're releasing. Literally thank it for everything it taught you, all the magic it brought you and who it helped you become. What a beautiful thing to do to close off a big chapter and give yourself some closure. The next thing is you want to tell your audience. So share the pivot or speak about it. Share it, celebrate it, and people will love to be taken on that journey and hear about it. So i'm going to be sharing soon about what I'm going to be releasing in my business. I'm not feeling a hundred percent ready yet, but it's going to come soon and I'm going to celebrate it loud and proud of it being the most amazing chapter of my life. And then obviously you want to go and close the loop so you can go and archive the funnel that you sell it with, or unpublish the sales page, take it off your website, remove all of the things that lead to it. Digital detox basically, and then don't rush to fill it. I would say don't rush to fill the space and don't fill the space out of an erratic energy or make a decision like, okay, I've closed this offer down I need to now create something immediately right now. And then you create something out of this rush energy, rather just pause. Let's be in that space and let things come naturally. Let the downloads come, it's going to naturally unfold for you. I promise you it will arrive. Don't force it. Trust that your next evolution, the next thing that's going to be so aligned in your business is going to arrive. Whether you are walking on the beach, showering, in gym, you have this amazing download, it's going to arrive. Just pay attention, pay attention, pay attention. So you don't need to cling to what was just because it works. If it feels like a cage to you, if it feels misaligned. You are an incredible, powerful woman, and you are here to build an empire and a legacy, \ and a business that isn't just a moneymaking machine, but an extension of who you are. It's very spiritual in itself. And as you evolve as a person, your business will evolve with you. So if this episode landed for you, please let me know, share it with me, send me a message if you want to share something that you want to let go of in your business. And if you're in a mid pivot like me, message me on Instagram or email me. I would love to witness you and celebrate you. We're in it together basically. Just know that you're not crazy, you are courageous, and this is your evolution. The best is yet to come, and that is what I'm telling myself. The best is yet to come. So I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I'll chat to you again next week. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you would like to ditch the live launch rollercoaster and start selling your courses Evergreen in an automated way, then make sure to grab my Free Daily Sales Guide below. This will show you the behind the scenes evergreen machines that six to seven figure business owners are using to make sales all the time. Hit the link below and grab it. I appreciate you so much, and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.