Episode 335: The Plateau Season of Entrepreneurship

The Season No One Posts About: When Business Feels Heavy Even Though It’s Working

Description

What happens when your business is doing well—but you still feel unmotivated, disconnected, or stuck?

In this episode, Christa Gurka talks about the season many entrepreneurs quietly experience but rarely discuss: when revenue is steady, clients are happy, your team is solid… yet something still feels off.

If you’ve ever wondered, “Why do I feel this way when everything is going right?” this episode is for you. Christa breaks down the emotional cycles of entrepreneurship, founder identity shifts, and how to know whether you need to rest, reset, pivot—or simply stop chasing the next goal. 

What You’ll Learn

•  Why success can sometimes feel heavier than struggle 
•  The emotional cycle of entrepreneurship (growth, plateau, reinvention) 
•  Why high achievers often move the goalpost after every win 
•  How to tell if you need a reset, a pivot, or nothing at all 
•  Signs you may be creating chaos because calm feels uncomfortable 
•  Why fulfillment may need to come from outside your business 

Key Takeaway

You may not be broken or burned out.
 You may simply be in a new season that requires a different version of you. 

Ask Yourself

•  Am I tired because I’m doing too much—or the wrong things? 
•  What parts of my business drain me? 
•  What still lights me up? 
•  Am I chasing a new goal because I want it… or because I don’t know how to be still? 

Call to Action

If this episode resonated, DM Christa on Instagram @ChristaGurka and let her know what season you’re in.

Want support building a business that serves your life—not consumes it?
 Visit christagurka.com

Transcript

Speaker 0:50

Hey there everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Female Empowered Podcast. I am once again your host Christa Gurka, and today's episode is entitled, the Season No One Posts About, or at least they don't publicly post about it, but when you feel something is off in your business and not off because something's going wrong, it's off when. Everything seems to be going right. So I do think that a lot of people don't talk about this or don't post about it at least publicly because they don't really understand what's going wrong, what's going on. Usually what's happening, take a little sip of water. Usually what's happening is we don't know how to articulate this feeling because. We've hoped for this and prayed for this and worked for this. When our inboxes at zero, when our Asana project management management system says we have no tasks when we're doing all the right things, and now we're what the hell am I supposed to do now? I don't know who I am or what I'm doing if I'm not hustling and grinding and exhausted and overworked, so. If your business is at a point where revenue's, revenue's doing well, clients are coming in, clients are happy, your team is doing pretty well, and business is doing well, but you still feel, I don't know, heavy unmotivated, disconnected. You might be thinking what's wrong with me, or what's wrong in my business? Or What do I have to fix? And I wanna talk about this because it happened to me. Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you, but something is shifting. And what I want you to, what I want to help you do during this episode is figure out what it is. Because if you don't, a few things could happen. One, you could drive yourself to burnout. Right. Two, you could blow up something that's working that you don't need to do because you're sabotaging yourself. Or three, you're gonna stay stuck in this Cycle and you don't know how to get yourself out of. So what we're going to break down today is the emotional cycle of entrepreneurship. Okay? We're also gonna talk about why stable, but uninspired is actually a signal of what's going on, whether that be with you or your business. How to decide if you need to rest, reset, or pivot, and actually what to do, think and feel during this season of your business, of your life. In general. Alright, so one, let's first talk about the emotional cycle that a lot of business owners don't talk about. most of us think that this is how business goes. You start, you grow, you scale, you have freedom, right? Start grow. It's a linear line. But if we're being honest with ourselves, it really looks excitement, growth. Chaos, more growth, stability, plateau failure, reinvention. So if you're watching me on YouTube, I'm doing squiggly lines all the way up and down. Entrepreneurship is not a straight line. And entrepreneurship in the words of Simon Sinek is an infinite game. If you have not read that book or listened to that book, infinite Game is a great, great book by Simon Sinek. So. Plateau when your business is at a plateau is usually where a lot of high achieving women, high achieving business owners start to question everything I know that I did when this was happening to me. according to the US Small Business Administration, most small businesses plateau between two and five, which is usually you two and five, sorry, which is usually somewhere between 250,000 and $500,000. Then you see another spike, and then there's another plateau usually around the 800,000 to a million dollar mark. All right, and then according to Harvard Business Review, founder burnout and disengagement increases significantly once businesses reach operational stability. Now, one of the reasons I think this is happens is because most founders. High achieving women. We are high achievers, and so if any of you. Resonate with continuing to move the goalpost. Every time you succeed at something, you will understand this feeling because you accomplish what you set out to accomplish, and then you just push the goalpost further. So most of us don't sit in that. I did it. I got here, I'm here. We just keep pushing the goalpost further, which is why we never cross the finish line. And so that's that feeling of burnout and exhaustion when we reach operational stability. 'cause we're what are we striving for now? Where are we going? Are we playing defense instead of offense? And most of us are really good playing offense, but we don't love playing defense. It just doesn't feel good to ourself. And at the beginning of something, whether that be a new project, whether that be the beginning of your business, everything is new. Think about a relationship, right? Everything is new, everything is exciting. You have the butterflies, all the big wins feel big. You're building, you're growing, you're producing, you're busy. And that's how we, our nervous system feels. Safe, right? Because usually we thrive in chaos, but once we hit stability, the problems change a little bit because there's not as many fires to put out. Our growth slows a little bit. The work might become repetitive, and for some people that thrive in chaos, this is an uncomfortable place for us to live when we don't have anything we're fixing, when we don't have any. W problems people need us for. everything we try to achieve, we've now achieved. And now we're well what, what do I do with myself? And that's where the identity shifts start to happen as business owners. So we could feel things Everything is working and I no longer feel, feel excited, or everything is working, and I thought this would feel different, which is why I'm a huge, huge believer the motto of be, do, have. So instead of. Do have, be do the work, have the thing, become the person you want. We really have to be the person we want, do the work and then have the thing because. Getting to seven figures. I say this, I said this to people all the time. I thought I would feel significantly different when I passed the seven figure mark. And if anything, I felt heavier. I had to now play defense I can't go down. I'm a seven figure business owner Now I can't go backwards. I can't go from being a seven figure business owner being a six figure business owner. That would be failure, right? Or you get to, you lose a hundred pounds, you're oh, I thought I'd feel different when I was thinner. No, you have to be the person first, and then you do the thing, and then you have the thing, right? Because getting there something external is never going to change your internal feelings. Only internally changing yourself will have you feel a different way. Internally, you can have full schedules, you can have consistent cash flow, you can have strong retention, and you can still feel less than, you can still feel like a failure. You can still feel underpaid, whether that be energetically or financially. You can still feel disconnected from your role. Those things. Have to come internally. You have to truly, truly believe that you are separate from your business in order to. Understand where this shift is happening. So we may say all the time, I want my people to be independent. I don't know why they rely on me for everything. But once people become independent and if our self-worth, I'm saying that in air quotes comes from helping people and people thinking we're great because we go above and beyond and we no longer fill that role anymore. We no longer have to do that. We could feel lost. All right, so if you ask yourself, what am I feeling tired about? Am I tired because I'm actually doing too much? Am I tired because I'm doing the wrong things? Am I tired because outgrown this version of myself as a business owner or as a person in general. Am I tired because I'm making things harder than they need to be? Sometimes things are hard in business for sure, and sometimes we make them harder than they need to be. We are creating the problem. Those are very, very different problems to have, and they require different solutions to fixed. Okay? If you've outgrown your original version of yourself, and I will tell you this, to get to a certain level of business ownership and entrepreneurship, owner have to become a different person. I, Krista Gca had to become a different version of Krista Gca to get to the point where I could successfully sell my business for seven figures. I had to shed and outgrow a variety of versions of myself to get there. And I could tell you that was the hardest shit I ever had to do, but it was the most rewarding. Because sometimes the business you built to have time freedom, flexibility to prove something, I certainly did as an Enneagram three, I was very much externally motivated to make money. May not be the business that fulfills you long term. It just may not be. You may change, your business may change, and that's not a failure. That's you evolving into a new person. Maybe you're evolving and you decide you don't wanna treat as many clients anymore. Maybe you're less excited about the day-to-day operations. Maybe you're more interested in strategy and business development than serving clients, or maybe it's vice versa. Maybe you're I'm really not interested in the strategy and business development, and I am more interested in the client facing work. This is where you maybe start questioning your pricing, your offers, your schedule. That's not really burnout. That's a CEO, that's a business owner identity shift. Or it's making things. I'm saying this again hard in quotation marks because you thrive in chaos. How many of you actually have nothing to do and feel you're doing? if you've checked off everything, you feel lost. You're what am I supposed to be doing? I'm definitely supposed to be doing something right now. Your inbox is clear. You have no to-do list. You don't know what to do in that calm and silence. For those of us that feel that we thrive oftentimes in chaos. And so what do we do when things are calm? We blow shit up because we thrive in chaos and it's very uncomfortable for us. We feel lazy or if, if we're not being productive. So I want you to ask yourself, are you trying to make things harder than they need to be? Because for some reason you are fueled by putting out fires, solving problems, people needing you. And if your business is doing phenomenal and you are in the fact where I have to blow some shit up, go get a hobby, learn something new. I'm learning Mahjong right now, and let me just tell you, it is so fun. And instead of creating all these new, oh, I should do this in my business and I should do this in my business and I should do this, it has taken the energy, that mind energy of me trying to learn something new and build something and is giving me an outlet so I don't blow up shit in my business. Okay, so if your business is doing well and it's thriving, but for some reason internally you're seeking something, go get a hobby. Learn Mahjong. Learn how to knit. Play pickleball. Play padel, do something, but you don't have to blow up your business. Alright? What you want to try to figure out is, do you really need a reset in your business? Do you need a pivot or do you need nothing at all? Do you have to quash that feeling inside of you directly and it has nothing to do with your business? You don't have to change everything. Sometimes you just need a reset. Sometimes you need a little pivot or sometimes this is really what, what happened to me too when I was I need a little, inspiration or motivation, something else. And that's when I started doing the consulting. And I thought that when my kids went to college, I'd be oh, I'm working, working, working. They were in preschool then elementary school and then high school, and I was oh, when they go to college, I'll go back to teaching. And then I got to 50 and I was Ugh, I don't wanna do that anymore. Right, and so what did I do? I started consulting. It really lights me up. It really, really lights me up to work with other female business owners and help them see the holes in their business and plug the holes and be better versions of themselves because I know how hard it is, but I also know how rewarding it is to get to the other. Side of that, and that is the true, true transformation in a business owner when you can really delineate between a feeling you're having personally and something that's really going on in your business. I, so one way to figure out. If it's something in your business that is causing you to be physically exhausted or you're feeling overwhelmed with a small tax or you're reactive and emotional is take a CEO day or week or two days and try to have no slack. Nobody's communicating with you about work. There's no quick check-ins, there's no emails. I want you to try to track your energy, not your productivity. Those are two different things, and I think high achievers have a really hard time delineating between the two. Our energy comes from being productive and our energy should come from doing things that light us up, not necessarily being productive. Again, maybe try to learn a new hobby, learn a new language, travel. Walk your dog, go to the gym, do something outside of work and see how you feel. Do you continue to feel bored? Are you lit up by that something else? Maybe you can intersperse more outside things into your life to light you up and make you feel and feel your energy and fuel your tank. Cool. Do you feel there's something bigger on the horizon for you? Try to see if you can listen to the voice in your head and figure out if you can find what it is that you need. Sometimes it's, again, doing things outside of your business. You just need some new motivations, some new inspiration, and that could be, I don't know, learning how to play piano, learning how to play guitar. There was a period of time where one of my kid, when of my kids were in high school, that I would read the book that they read alongside them. Not to give them the answers, but to have talks with them about it and be oh, did you hear what that, what did you think about that part? And it was also a way for me to get involved in something that took my mind off of creating problems in my business. So the other thing that you can do to try to figure out where your head is at in terms of your business is what parts of your business drain you. Be honest with yourself. What parts of your business are draining you? What parts of the business energize you? What do you want to see more of in the next 12 months and what do you wanna see less of? Be honest with yourself. What lights you up right now? For me, what lights me up is working with other business owners on every, spectrum of business businesses that are just opening to businesses that have passed the seven figure mark, and we have. All of those the same way in you, in your businesses right now, you guys probably have people that have never, ever, ever done Pilates or yoga and people that have been practicing for 20 years. I work with business owners that have not even signed the lease to their business, and I work with business owners that are in the seven figures. Different issues, different problems, things we work on, but ultimately the foundation is still the same. How do I get these women to see themselves in a different light and to make the best decisions for their business and their life? So what parts of the business are draining you? Sometimes there are periods of time where you have to get through those parts, but other times I'm you don't have to be doing that anymore. And the only reason you're still doing it is because one, you're afraid to have a difficult conversation. You're keep doing it because for some reason you are fueled by the chaos. Okay? Or you're not holding people accountable. So as we scale in our business and as we go from signing our lease to surpassing seven figures, right, we want to, or we should be work, and I say working in quotes because working means a variety of things. Fewer hours, we should be seeing higher profit margins. We should be leading more and doing less. And building our business so that it is a sellable asset. So if you are at the point that you're over 500, 600, 700,000, and you're thinking, where do I go from here? Making sure that your business is a sellable asset for that day, that maybe you decide never to sell it, but if for some reason that time comes, you wanna be ready. So if you're at a place where you're I'm at 500, 600, $700,000 in business, I wanna know, is my business sellable? That's exactly what we do in our Elevate to Exit program. I have three businesses in there right now that are looking to sell in the next three to five years, and what I'm helping them do is understand what's the true value of their business so they have an accurate idea. teaching them the ins and outs of how business deals are structured and helping them make the right decision so when the time comes to sell, they have set their business up in a way that they can walk away with something that's truly valuable to them. So as you think about this time, if you are thinking, I don't know what's wrong with me, I'm still feeling heavy, I'm still feeling, I'm not inspired anymore. And this is a big thing for high achievers. We always wanna be training or pushing for something. So this is again, go to train and run a marathon, but you don't have to blow up your business. Right. You might be in a plateau in a transition season, and once you can call it out, once, you can name it, once you can articulate that, you can make adjustments. That alone, being able to say out loud, I know exactly where I am. I know exactly what season I'm in. It removes so much pressure for yourself. Yes, I'm in this stability season. Great. How can I stabilize more? Maybe make one adjustment, not 10 or 20 adjustments, make a decision, decide I'm gonna coast. There's nothing wrong with coasting for a period of time. There's not. It feels weird for a lot of us, but there's nothing wrong with coasting. So this would be a rest period. Can you refine some things in your business or is there something you need to reinvent in yourself? Reengage in yourself. Okay. But you don't have to keep pushing. You don't have to keep moving the goalpost. And if this is permission for you guys to say, I don't need to push for seven figures. I don't need to push for eight figures. I'm okay where I am right now. I'm making the money that I want. I'm home with my kids every day after school. I'm good here. That's fabulous. These are the things you wished for months ago, years ago. When you set out to do this thing that was a business owner and now you have them, and for some reason it feels weird, it feels different. you don't have anything you're chasing. You don't have to chase, you don't have to keep running the race. You can sit here for a while. There's nothing wrong with that. So if you're feeling. this is a feeling for you. see if you can name it, see if you can articulate what it does feel and see if you can find what you're trying to fulfill inside, and your inner being as a, as a female, as a woman, as a mother, and see if you're trying to use your business to fulfill that, because maybe it's something that won't get fulfilled in your business. Yeah, maybe it's something you need from outside your business to fulfill that part of you and who you are. And so I think this is an interesting episode just because it's more about feeling and less about tangible insights. But if you're kind of feeling business is doing great, I just don't know why I feel weird, maybe think about this. maybe this is what's happening to you. You've hit a plateau and you don't know what to do in this plateau. You don't know what to do in this status quo because you're used to always pushing for more. If this resonated with you, I would love to hear your feelings and insights. I know that's happened to me in my career as a business owner, and it was really hard for me to figure out what was actually happening. I'd love to chat with you, DM me over on Instagram. I reply to every single dm. It's not a bot, it's myself. So if you're, if you have had these thoughts or you're currently having these thoughts and feelings and you wanna chat about it, DM me over on Instagram. I'm @christagurka, and until next time, ladies, have a wonderful day, night, week, weekend. Bye for now.