Why Doing More Isn’t Growing Your Business: Ep 90

We’ve been taught that if results slow down, the answer is simple:

Do more.

• More posts.
• More offers.
• More emails.
• More launches.
• More platforms.

But what if the real problem isn’t that you’re doing too little…  what if it's that you’re taking the wrong kind of action?

In this episode, we unpack the difference between anxious motion and aligned movement - two things that can look identical on the outside but create completely different outcomes in your business.

Because being busy and being impactful are not the same thing.

Many business owners find themselves caught in what Cassandra calls the hustle loop; constantly doing more in the hope that momentum will return and success will result. But over time, this pattern drains energy, disconnects intuition, and turns business into noise.

Instead, Cassandra explores a different approach: aligned action; decisions and movement that come from clarity, regulation, and intentional leadership.

You’ll hear:

• Why “more action” often produces fewer results
• How anxious motion quietly drives burnout in business owners
• The subtle signs you’ve slipped into the hustle loop
• Why clarity and regulation create stronger business momentum
• A practical way to test whether a decision is aligned or fear-driven

This episode is not about slowing down for the sake of it.

It’s about taking the right action ...  at the right time ...  from the right place.

Because when your nervous system is regulated and your decisions are clear, your action carries far more weight.

And in this market, that difference matters.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Hi everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Today, my friends, we are going to talk about action. Action and in particular aligned action. I've had a lot of comments and emails from people going, Cash, keep talking about action and alignment. What on earth do you mean? So today we're going to dive into this one in some detail. Action. Now, action, you think you know what that is? We think we know what that is, don't we? But somewhere along the way, we got taught that more action equals more results. More posts, more offers, more emails, more launches, more hours, more services, more programs, all sorts of more. And we began to equate that with results, didn't we? And when results slow down, like our client numbers start to decrease or our revenue starts to decrease, what do we do? We do more. The answer we're always given is do more, hustle harder, work harder. Now, this is what I want to challenge today. I don't believe that all action is equal. All action is not equal. Some action is just action for the sake of being busy. Some action is just action for the sake of having an action. If it doesn't result in an outcome, then what is the point? And there's also an element of what I call anxious motion, okay, where we're doing things from this scarcity, desperation. Ooh, ooh, hustle, hustle. If I don't do these things, I might not get more clients. Oh, I might not get enough money in. There's that anxious motion, and there's also what I call aligned movement. Taking the right steps, those aligned steps, and generally they tend to happen in a way that is calmer, it's clearer, it feels more grounded, and frankly, it feels a heck of a lot more in flow. Now, taking action might look the same on the outside. It might, but they feel completely different. They feel completely different. And one of them builds momentum, the other one pushes you towards exhaustion. So that is why we want to be making sure that we're in aligned action. Now let's talk about why doing more doesn't actually equal more results. If you've ever had a week where you were busy every day, ticking the boxes, answering the emails, posting the content, yet the needle in your business didn't actually move, well, you have experienced exactly this. You were active, but you weren't impactful. Okay, so you were busy, busy, busy, but you probably didn't get more bookings. You might not have had more revenue in, but you were super busy, okay? You're exhausted at the end of the day, but you didn't make an impact. That's the difference. That's why there is a difference. Because that anxious motion is reactive. It comes from fear, it comes from scarcity, it comes from desperation. When you're working from anxious motion, you might have thoughts in your head like, it just has to work, or oh, I need a new client, or where's the next lot of money coming from? Or I need to pay that bill, I need some more revenue, or I can't slow down because if I slow down, then the money stops. If any of those types of things are running through your head, you're working from a point of anxious motion, and that's not where you want to be. Aligned movement, on the other hand, like I alluded to just a minute ago, it is intentional. And I've talked about intentional action for years, haven't I, on this podcast? Intentional action, aligned movement comes from clarity. It feels focused. There's less volume to it, don't get me wrong, but there's more power, there's more impact. It also means that your nervous system is calm, your nervous system is regulated. You're making decisions from a perspective of clarity. Your decisions will be sharper, they'll be more aligned, they'll be more congruent. You are going to be able to stop throwing spaghetti at the wall, because we all know spaghetti don't stick, does it? You're going to start making clean moves, decisive moves, the right moves. You're going to be able to say yes to this and no to that and know that it's the right thing. But let's talk about the cost. What is the cost if you were somebody who's stuck in what I call the hustle loop of that anxious motion where hustle, hustle, hustle? Because let's be frank, we've been taught that, haven't we? That if you want to do better, you've got to hustle harder. No, no, no. That's not the way of it anymore. The thing is, this this actions, the anxious motion, the hustle loops, the hustle harder, it's all a bit subtle. You can get stuck in those hustle loops when you feel left behind. When you feel behind the eight ball, other people are doing better, other people are posting content, other people are doing this, other people are doing that. So you create more, you do more, and then you feel tired and you feel exhausted. And your quality of your work drops, the results, they just don't land. And then what happens? You start to panic, you start to worry. And what do you do? You create more, you create more, and the hustle loop continues. Round, around, around, around you go. Over time, this does not just drain your energy, it does your creativity. It disconnects you from your intuition. It turns your business into just noise. And case in point, I was talking to a client today who is in in exactly this spot where she was saying to me, I just don't feel like I can move forward. Because I just I feel like I'm frozen, I'm stuck here. Because I can't see the way forward. I have all of these ideas, but I don't have the creativity to put them on paper. I used to feel in my gut what was the right move, but I don't feel that anymore. I completely lost my intuition. And my business feels like such a pressure that I've lost the spark, I've lost the passion, I don't love it anymore. And eventually, what happens? Resentment creeps in. We start to feel exactly how she explained today. We we resent the business. We might look at our day and when someone cancels, we feel relief. Whoa, thank goodness. Yep. And it's not because you don't love the work. And to be frank, it's not even because you've lost the passion of it. It's just because you become disconnected from the way that you should be working. You've adopted this hustle harder culture that just isn't you. And to be frank, I don't think it's really anybody. We need to be working the best way for us and our nervous systems. Aligned energy, though, actually multiplies your impact. And this is what so many people miss because it multiplies your action. When you're taking action from a grounded place, a place of clarity, a pace, a place of conviction, it carries weight and it carries more weight than 15,000 pieces of generic social media content that you've just thrown out there in the hope that someone's going to read it. You might have experienced this. Tell me, have you ever written an email that seemed to land harder than the last 20 posts you put on social media? Or maybe you wrote a blog that started to get a stack of comments. I know that's happened to me. You know, I put out an email recently and I had over 100 people hit reply within an hour and go, Cass, you spoke to me. You absolutely spoke to me. This is aligned energy. It's not passive, it's not slow, but it is potent. It is impactful. And when you are feeling clear, calm, regulated, when you're not leaking energy from, you know, terrible boundaries and everything else going on in your life, you are able to be in a position of power. And it's quiet power, it's silent strength, it's your own strength. You are no longer second guessing, you are no longer over-explaining. You're not overperforming, trying to feel credible, to try and feel justified. You are instead in a place of leadership and it's calm leadership, and I call it soft strength. It's a leadership energy that converts more naturally. You're not trying to convince people to come and work with you. Your leadership energy is such that they just want to come and work for you. Let's talk about the shift because there's a shift here I want you to try and anchor. This is the shift that's going to make the change, that's going to move you from this anxiety-ridden motion hustle, harder situation into a place of aligned intentional movement and aligned intentional action. And it's actually not less action, exactly, but it's better action, better action. It's about being discerning. It's about being rational and discerning. Before you add anything else to your plate, ask yourself, is this coming from a place of clarity or is it coming from a place of fear? Is this going to expand me or is this going to exhaust me? Aligned action, it feels clean, it feels calm, it feels in flow. It might stretch you, don't get me wrong, because we want to be growing, but it won't scramble you. And there is a difference, and there's a very clear difference, isn't there? So if you are looking at something and you're looking at that thing going, right, no, that's actually from a place of fear. I'm worried that I don't have enough clients coming in, so I'm posting 12 different reels a day. That's fear, that's not clarity. So let's talk about some real examples. I've had so many clients come to me over the years who are convinced that their answer was doing more. More social platforms, more offers, more programs, more launches, more freebies, more lead magnets, more webinars, more, more, more, more, more. But when we slowed down, not stopped, but slowed down and stripped it back to bare basics, we came to one clear message, one strong offer, one primary platform, and one consistent rhythm. And that was it. That's what we call minimum viable marketing. Minimal viable marketing. One clear message, one strong offer, one primary platform, and one consistent rhythm. And you want to know what happened? Their results improved. And why? Because they weren't scattered anymore. They weren't exhausted. Their energy was consolidated, their brand and their message sharpened, their voice strengthened. And when your energy stops fragmenting, that's when you can start to build real momentum. So sometimes the breakthrough actually isn't adding, it's actually in subtracting. Because it takes courage. It takes courage to subtract, it takes courage to say no. Because when we are in that hustle culture, if we're thinking about removing something, our fear brain goes, oh, what if we lose income? What if we stop that thing and we don't make money? Yeah, what if that takes too much income away? But the subtracting, the simplifying makes so much more sense. People in this market right now are doing so much better from simplifying their offers. And clients of mine that have four offers on the table are outperforming those people who are having 12. And I saw someone the other day that had 22 different offers, different packages, different programs, different online courses that people could have. That's just confusing. And think about it from a client point of view. If you're looking at that, how do I know which one's the right one for me? There's too many. So how are we going to start building this into your business and into your life? This slowed down, this step-by-step consolidated energy-reserving action. How are we going to do this? And this is how I start with myself, and this is how I start with all my clients as well. And it's a really practical way to begin. And it's about tuning into yourself and tuning into your body. And if you're asking yourself something, hmm, like, should I start a YouTube channel? Take a breath and breathe out and ask yourself, ask your body, not your mind, is this a yes? Is this something I should do? A yes in your body, it feels open, it feels forward, it feels clear, it feels expansive, it feels like movement. A no in your body is going to feel heavy, it's going to be tight, it's going to be avoidant. I've often described it, and you've probably heard me say this before. I've often described it like a jacket that doesn't feel like it fits properly. That's how it sort of feels to me, constricted, you know, is the word you'd probably use. With anything, you need to be thinking and asking the body, how does this feel? Should I do this thing? Case in point, at the moment, you guys know that I'm looking for a new clinic space to bring back my practice. And I've seen so many. And this is what I've been doing to judge. Is this something I should look for? Is this not something I should look at further? And does it feel right? Does it feel expansive? Can I grow here? Can I be the best version of myself here? Does it feel like a forward action? Now, don't get me wrong, there might be some fears that come up with certain things because one thing I can speak to is the clinic that I did find is actually above the budget that I had of what I wanted to go to. But being strategic, ran some numbers and it ran quite a lot of numbers. If you know me, there's a lot of numbers and strategy involved. But after doing all of that, I realized that for that bit extra rent that I am paying, the potential payoff in that space, the way that I can grow in that space, the different modalities, the additional practitioners I can bring on is going to far outweigh that extra income that it's going to take to pay that rent. The other space that I was assessing against doesn't have a lot of space for growth. Can't really add those other things, can't add too many practitioners, it's going to be constrained. So feeling into that, I knew there was a little bit of a fear coming up, going, oh, but it's more than I budgeted for. But when I felt into those spaces, how do they feel? One felt constricted, it felt heavy, it felt tight. It felt fine, I could do it, but it didn't feel like a place that I could grow. It didn't feel like a place I could be my best self. I couldn't step into my next level. Whereas the other one was the opposite of all those things. Now, what this means, this doesn't mean that you only do what's comfortable. We want to be growing, we want to be stepping outside of our comfort zone, don't we? But it's about learning to differentiate between what is an aligned, appropriate step and an anxious push. And you'll be able to start to feel the difference. Because you don't want to override your body in this. And when you start to override your body repeatedly, this is when you end up burning out. But if you listen to your body, you start to build sustainably and make the right decisions. And sustainable success, it's real success. It's not the Instagram version. It's not the pretty pictures. Look at me here at the cafe having lunch because I'm so, you know, making so much money, don't have to work all day. That's Instagram and that's rubbish. Building sustainably is providing the life that you want to have. It's providing the retirement that you want to have. It's giving you the money so you and your family can have those amazing experiences, those holidays, buy the new car that you need. It's having the security of knowing when your hot water heater explodes at midnight that you've got the money there to buy a new one. It's different for everybody, but understanding what you're aiming for is really, really helpful in this process. So let's talk about your next step. What's the action step from today? Because I want you to do something, and it's something really, really simple. I want you to choose one task. One task that's on your plate. It might be a marketing. Let's say it's doing your Instagram posts. It might be putting together a new service you are planning. Whatever it is, just choose one task that you've had hovering over your head. And I want you to complete it only from a regulated, grounded place. If you feel frantic, if you feel scattered, gotta get it done, got to get it done, let's get this finished. Oh, quick, quick, quick. No, no, no. Pause, take a rest, stop, come back to it later. I want you to complete it from a place of relaxation, from a place of alignment. Because if you act from that place where your energy is leading your action, your movement compounds, the momentum compounds, you will finish that task quicker. It will be done better. Okay. It's a compounding effect like good old compound interest when you can work from that place. If you have any decisions in your business to make this week, try what I shared with you about speaking to the body and coming back into the body. Is it a yes or is it a no? And I want you to really listen to that. You might have to start to distinguish between what feels like a yes or a no versus what's ego mind, throwing up some fears, okay? Because ego mind is always going to try and keep you in the same little bubble you're in. Because even if that bubble's making no money, it's a safe bubble. Your ego mind knows that you're safe there because you're alive. Yeah. Might not have any money, might not be one, might be wondering where the next bills are getting paid from, but we're safe here right now. Even if stepping out and earning a million dollars is your goal, it's something new, it's a stretch. So you need to be able to distinguish the fears and put those to the side and then come to the body and go, right, is this a yes or is this a no? And like I said, in my world just this week I had to do that. And coming to the point of this clinic that's more expensive and it's double the price of what I was planning, was actually a really strong yes. And it was a no-brainer. As I said, remember, you know, aligned movement compounds. It gives you that momentum, it gives you that flow. Anxious motion though, and that anxious energy motion, that depletes you. So if you're running on that all the time, you're going to be exhausted. We need to get that balance, you know, and move that anxious motion out of there. Even if it is marketing content, simplify it. Take some of those things off your plate. Do you really have to do them all? You probably don't. Clarity and regulation are your unfair advantage in this market because most of your competitors, they're operating from that place of anxious motion, from that scarcity, from the worry, from the desperation. If you can step into the other side and operate from that place of calm, that place of clarity, you're already steps ahead. And to be frank, I think that's how and why, you know, at least some of the reason why my clinic grew the way it did from day dot, because I came at it with clarity, with strategy. I was always asking, yes, no, does this feel right? Does this not feel right? When I decided to move into a professional space out of my home clinic after only six weeks of operating, my books were full. But that was a big jump. And I was a single mum at the time. When I decided to do that and I asked that question, should I take this space or should I not take a space? And I got a really clear, calm feeling that I knew that was a yes, I went with it. Okay. Whereas a lot of other people would have gone, no, no, no, no, I can't yet. I'm afraid. I'm afraid right now. What if I can't keep up? What if the clients don't come? All these other things. That's just fear talking. Come back to the body, it will always tell you yes or no. Your intuition, it wins. So I hope that was helpful to you today. It's a short episode, but something that's been coming up for a lot of my one-to-one clients. And I wanted to give some um perspective on that. So, friends, great to have you here. And for now, just try and choose, choose those pathways that match your energy, that match your power, and really help you align to where you are and the next level that you want to want to attain. Take care and I'll see you next week. Great to have you here. Bye, everyone.