Ep #10: How To Fall Back in Love with Your Business Again

Five Steps for Female Founders to Fall Back in Love with Their Business

In this episode, we explore how female founders can reconnect with their businesses and reignite their passion. We delve into five key reasons why they may feel disconnected, including a lack of joy in their work, uncertainty about success, misconceptions about posting as a strategy, the pressures of maintaining an online presence, and the fear of self-promotion. The episode offers tough love, practical advice, and gentle reframes on how to overcome these challenges. Key themes focus on visibility, self-leadership, and the importance of building a business that aligns with one's values and vision. The host also emphasizes the need for a single core offering, a strong voice, and a unique sales mechanism to maintain business momentum. This episode is packed with insights and reflections to help female founders find joy and belief in their entrepreneurial journey once again.

00:00 Introduction: Reconnecting with Your Business
00:28 Five Reasons Female Founders Fall Out of Love with Their Business
01:46 Reason 1: Lack of Joy in Your Work
03:42 Reason 2: Doubts About Success
13:57 Reason 3: Posting is Not a Strategy
16:57 Reason 4: Pressure to Show Up Online
20:02 Reason 5: Fear of Self-Promotion
26:29 Conclusion: Falling Back in Love with Your Business

Hey there, and welcome to the Visibility for Female Founders Podcast. I'm your host, Ika Lucas, and this podcast is for you if you're an impact driven, founder, coach, or consultant who wants to find your own voice to speak, present, and amplify your message Online. 

We explore how to get past the visibility roadblocks and grow your capacity to be seen so you can attract then chase your perfect audience, while staying connected to the most important things by building a business th

Tis the season of love! 

This is your invitation to fall back in love with your business! 

Whether you are sick of posting for the sake of posting, or left feeling a little disillusioned with how to show up..

Join me over 4 weeks to help you reignite what's keeping you stuck. 

Join me in Jan 2026 for the season of love

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On Spotify, you can do that by leaving a comment on every episode, by clicking on an individual episode and leaving a comment and leaving a rating on top of the episode right under the podcast heading. 

Thanks so much.

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A five part framework to help you go From Second Guessing Your Visibility To Speaking For Sales Using Your Voice As A Bridge To Your Visibility .

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Transcript

0:28

Hey there and welcome back to the episode. Today we are talking about how to fall back in love with your business again. This is a visibility and self-leadership episode for female founders who feel disconnected. Overwhelmed or burdened by your business, and if you just need one more reason to believe again, then in this podcast, I want to share a few perspectives and give you some reflections to stop and think about in what I am coining this season of self-love. So I'm gonna kick off by explaining all the five reasons why you might be in the place that you're in right now, and why so many female founders might fall out of love with their business. The first of these reasons is that your work has no joy. The second thing that we're gonna be covering is that you're just not quite sure whether this is going to be working out. You may have tried a few things, and you may just be in a season of needing a bit more self-belief. You're just not sure whether this will work and you're looking outside of yourself for those solutions. The third is. Thinking posting is a strategy when it's not. Number four is really feeling the pressure to show up online while navigating many different environmental energies as well as navigating life itself. And the fifth one is really the fear of self-promotion and going against the grain of what everything that we've been taught that might be in conflict with what you are seeing online, which is the comparison. Versus your old identity. And I'm gonna be unpacking all of these for you in this week's podcast, which I'm so incredibly excited about. This is a jam packed episode, so make sure that you have all the attention that you need just for yourself to enjoy this one. So the first one that I'm gonna be talking about is that work has no joy. Now I'm gonna just mention that. From at least a couple of conversations that I've had over the last week. I'm hearing one or two scenarios, and one is that they may have already built up a successful consulting business, but the work in itself was, 12 to 14 hours a day every single day, all kinds of hours, middle of the night or whatever, working across various different time zones. And now they might be wanting that scalability that comes with an online business. So this is the first conversation that I've been having just in the last week. And then the second conversation that I've had in the last week is that they left their job only to have a business that's now basically paying the bills. That is, if there is business predictability of being paid for the work, when the invoices do get settled. Only to make them feel depleted with the kind of work that actually is coming in the first place, causing a bit of resentment and not really wanting to do it because there's no motivation to keep going, which really does the opposite of injecting joy. And really the reason for this is that there hasn't been a single way to monetize your expertise through one single scalable offering. While you take care of the meat and potatoes in your business to bring the scalable part of your business forward, and this is for the accelerators. Now, if you've taken my Visibility Foundation's workshop, you'll know what this means is that this is for the accelerators for people who are actually already have that expertise and that IP built up. But you actually just need a way for people to, uh, bring people into your expertise and your IP and package it up in a way where people can actually access your expertise by leaning into what they need the most. Now, the second reason that I'm hearing is that there's a general sense of distrust, which is, I don't know if this will work. Now I have said that we are in a season of self-love, but for this one I'm actually going to be giving you some tough love and you may not like hearing some of what needs to be said in this podcast. But if this statement is something that you have said or are saying when you are looking at investing in yourself in anything, any situation, any mentoring, coaching, or. Business development framework, whether it is to work on your voice, whether it's to work on your brand, whether it's to work on your messaging or anything, your website or whatever this statement of this better work this time, it actually puts the owners outside of yourself. Now, unless you are contracting out a service in which you have a set set of deliverables that you are getting from a person, this better work. Well, what are the conditions that. You know, you've gotta ask yourself what are the conditions needed outside of yourself for things to work? So what I mean by saying is if you are not ready to work for it and you need someone else to do the heavy lifting for you in your business, are you really being the leader for your business? Are you really leading yourself? And so the, the thing that you may have invested in the program that you may have invested in, maybe it didn't give you the return because they may, you know, in some, in some cases. There are some genuine situations where people have not delivered on the thing that they said that they would, in which case that is bad players, that's bad actor. You know that that's bad on account of, uh, these people. However, if you haven't actually done the work yourself through the container that you were in, then does that onus really sit on the person? Or does that owner sit on you? And I'm saying this completely as a person who actually has invested in lots of different things and there have been certain things that I didn't fully take on and run with them myself. And that fully falls on me and I'm taking ownership of that. So there is a little bit of this, you know, reframing that's needed off. I don't know if this will work because you really need to be able to back yourself. Um, when you are going into a conversation with yourself on that topic, which is what kind of self-trust are you ready to put forward for yourself with knowing that you've got the support to carry you forward? So here are some practical things to think about and what you really need is that belief in what you have to offer, and then the courage and motivation to make it work for you from the ground up. So I'm gonna be giving you some tough love for this, and apologies in advance again, if it offends. But it needs to be said, and that is for every finger that's pointing outwards, there's usually four back in your direction. Now entrepreneurship is the biggest project of self-development that you will ever take on. I have certainly experienced that myself, and which is why I'm sharing this with love, is that the one thing that I have learned from balancing both a job as well as a business is that building a business is bloody hard work and building a business that has scalability is bloody hard work because there are lots of different factors that need to go in. To making a business work? Well, from a scalability perspective, you'd have to have the volume if you're going, for a really lower priced product in your business. So if you don't have the volume, you've gotta overcome, you've gotta compensate for it through income that you get from some other means while you are building the volume part of your business. This is really just, simple maths. This is not rocket science. So. Think about the journey that you are on right now, and if you are thinking about setting up a scalable part of your business, then what you are really going to need to commit to is you're gonna need to commit to having an income that can support you while you are building. Out the foundational stuff that you need in order to get volume into your business, with your own ip, with your own expertise, with all of the life experiences that you've had. But it's not going to happen overnight. It's actually gonna take time, effort, and energy, because anything worthwhile actually takes time. It doesn't usually happen in a sprint. A sprint is when you can. Come up with certain deliverables that you will get handed to you and you run with them. You take them and you run with them and you make them your own right, but you're not gonna have something that's set and forget turnkey done for you like you would do when you exchange a contract, say to build a house, a brand new house. You exchange dollars in exchange for product that gets built for you and all you have to go in and live in it. Well, a business is not exactly like that because at the end of the day, if you don't have a tool that you can operate and operationalize such as an app or something that actually helps people do something specific, then you are the face of your business and your expertise and your IP are what you are selling. And it really needs you to be in your best optimal condition. And the pointing fingers and really looking at the ones that are actually pointing back at you are the most important piece of the puzzle in this whole process. So coming back to. The volume versus, income model, which is the scalability versus a service based business, is that if you lack systems and a proven offer that people have already paid you for time and again, then I'm gonna repeat this. You don't have the luxury of saying you want ease and flow if you are just starting out. And because as I described to someone just earlier this week, is that you can't have takeoff without thrust. Now, let me repeat that again. You cannot have liftoff. Without thrust. And yes, that might mean that it might take some hustle. So there is some out talking going on here in this podcast episode, which someone really needs to hear because quite frankly, no one really talks about this as much as they really should. And so no one is actually going to bring you leads that convert easily without proving your own methodology and I am just gonna say this with kindness that actually sits with you. So this is actually as much, about self-trust as it is about self-leadership and taking ownership, which is what part are you willing to play? To get your content out there and what part are you willing to play to validate and close offers when they're created? So that's something to ponder about. And you can have all the handholding but you can't expect to get to cruising altitude without there being enough pressure in the lead up to that liftoff or the takeoff so that you can get to cruising altitude. And that's my tough talk settled on this one for this episode. But I do wanna offer you a gentle reframe despite everything that I've said, and that is that the way that you are thinking about this whole situation, which is, this may not work this time, is that you may be basing. Your past results on future outcomes. And there's a really good way of reframing and looking at this. And there's a really strange life parallel that I wanted to share, that will help with a penny drop actually from my real life scenario. And literally this has again, played out this week. Which is that I've been helping my son navigate through some challenging exams for which he did about some total of two days of work before he sat the test, and naturally the outcomes spoke for themselves. Now, there is a, olive branch being offered where he can REIT that test again, but it does mean that his summer holidays will be taken up with preparing for the second chance. And so there is naturally a bit of built up, pent up tension about the thought about this sitting, this test, because the data points that we have to look at are two days worth of effort for one day's outcome and results. Now, if you look at the results that you may have got, or I may have got, I know fully well the results that I have got are fully. On account of the work that I put in, it's directly proportional. It's all, literally physics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And when you decide on inaction, you will get the results of inaction. And so I will say this is that if you think about the two data points, which is the 48 hours leading into an exam or a test versus two whole months of daily practice and. Consistency in the lead up to the finale or the test. Those two data points are completely different. And so the outcome that you might be looking at when you're asking yourself is this even going to work, are based off of two very different data points. So you've gotta really be able to compare apples with apples when you're looking at outcomes and thinking about whether or not this is going to work out because you are actually starting to look outside of yourself when in fact. A, a large part and a real key player in this whole, situation is quite often the person itself and what they are or what they're not doing. And that is the reason why there are so many scaled offerings in the market is because people understand that inherently carrying somebody else is impossible unless the person is actually willing to meet, uh, the market where they're at. Through putting in the work through self-direction, through, self-leadership, through guided discipline and focus despite all of the energies and things that might actually be affecting you. So I just wanted to leave you on that gentle reframe, given that I just laid into the second, example, a fair bit there with my tough talk on this. Particular topic, which I felt quite deeply about and spent a long time thinking. Now, the third thing that I have noticed why people fall out of love with their business is really thinking about posting as a strategy when it's not. Now you can post all you like, but it's not posting that will get you sales. It's when you change your. Perspectives and with positioning and your personal brand, that is when people actually start knowing what you stand for and why, rather than just the how you know and what you would sell and what your process is. And it's when people will actually start gravitating towards you. So post, but only post, when you have formed your perspective and are not afraid to go out there and lay a stake in the ground for what you actually stand for, because that is ultimately what leadership is all about, is standing your ground and, and not ready to back down on your point of view just because. You think someone won't agree and you, because you have formed a perspective of based off of your real life experiences that if you haven't yet validated, you will be feeling that. Friction of, but what if I put myself out there and, someone says something, right? So you've gotta be able to be willing to validate your offering as you're going along, and which is why, which is part of the reason why the sales process. In posting is so incredibly important is because it actually helps to give you those micro wins as you're going along, from, it being, not just about volume, but actually more about the breadcrumbs that you need to have along the way to validate what it is that you're gonna be. Offering and then with the view that you can then scale it with separate experts who can help you with the scaling side of the business. But more often than not, coming back to my previous point is that a lot of the times people actually want to be able to get to cruising altitude without necessarily having the thrust or the work that you need to put in for the liftoff. And you will find yourself trying to clutch at straws. With buying an AI course, with trying to, create content with ai. Well, I'm just gonna say this again. This might again, upset a few people, but I'm really on a fire here today, which is you can't automate creativity. You don't understand. So if you haven't yet created. A magnetic system for yourself where you know that from having put out the content you are, the people are actually gravitating towards you, and you've done that with any length of consistency, that is when the AI systems will play in. With amplifying the existing impact that you've made in the marketplace. So leave it on that one for, for there, but coming back to the point of. Posting is not the strategy, and it's really changing perspectives and your own core positioning that actually puts you front and center for what it is that you do and what you share. But without oversharing. The fourth point that I wanna discuss is the feeling, the pressure to show up online while navigating life. Now, there have been many times in my life when there have been endless energy swings that I'm managing. It could be. From social media with, each scroll that I've taken at a fraction of the energy from the person whose perspective of, or POV that I was taking in. So I get that you don't want to add the noise, but have you asked yourself whether the noise that you are perceiving is actually a glimpse into your own reality of what you are perceiving and what you are consuming? There certainly is noise, but people, you will usually seek me out. Through that noise because they love what I stand for. And similarly, there will be people who will love what you stand for and is where you want your voice to shine and share your perspectives without the energies getting you down. Now the second is, you know, the feeling, the pressure to show up online while navigating life and. Could be. The reason why you fall out of love in your business is all of the energies from your environment. Now, we can't control the people around in our environment, but the cliche of, we can control how we choose to respond to the environment has never been truer. And I will share that I've been in a negative environment and a negative mental state in the past, and I realized that I couldn't control my environment, but I could choose my response by giving myself the gift of micro wind. Something that gave me a reason to wake up in the morning rather than not having a vision, and it was with putting one step in front of the other when I didn't know what else would work. It's the full and utter belief. And giving myself and reframing the proof that I was giving myself despite the fact. That I wasn't necessarily always making big wins, but I knew that what vision I hold for myself, and that is the gift you can give yourself as a female founder, is the gift of vision, which will carry you through even through the darkest of time. So when you can't always overcome. Mental chatter and you just wanna hold onto a single reason to believe it'll be the vision that you come back to for your business, and is the reason why despite there being pressure to show up online while navigating your life and circumstances and environment, and if you feel like you're falling out of love in your business. That is the reason why a lot of people that I see struggle is because they struggle to reconnect back with the vision that they may have had, and that quite often helps to open up a window or a gateway through my initial conversations when I first bring. And onboard clients into my program activator is that the first thing that we do is actually help you get back in touch with your vision by understanding the whole map of your business. So that is one of the ways in which, you can control the environment by actually controlling your reality and how you respond to that. So the fifth thing that I want to go into is the fear of self-promotion. And this is very real because I've actually felt it myself. It's really about going against the grain and in conflict with what you're seeing. As people, we have been treated like sheep, where, the flock stays together and we have the sheet mentality of. Doing what everybody else is doing, because let's face it, standing out means that we're actually putting our neck out there. And, I put it down and akin to being, without night vision goggles in the middle of a sav. You know, you are out there and you can sense that maybe there are lions and tigers and all these wild animals they can see you through their night vision. But you can't see them. And that is the feeling that sometimes I've had through this whole posting online, situation, especially in the early days. And I tell you what though, is that the fear actually is like. An erosion in itself. It will chip away at you. It'll chip away at you and it'll keep you exactly where you need to be. And it can be incredibly draining. Fear really keeps us from tapping into ourselves because we go into this trap. Of shuttling between comparisons. So comparing what other people are doing and then comparing what we are meant to be doing, and then looking at what somebody else is posting, and then looking at what we are supposed to be posting, and then looking at how somebody has done something with AI and thinking, wow, that must be great. So I need to do that with ai and. So no wonder there is that feeling of noise, which I mentioned earlier in the episode, which is really taking that comparison, state of mind and replacing it with what do I have to offer my voice, my values, my, identity, my POV, and I'm gonna be sharing a little bit more of that in a second. But speaking about identity. It is the identity that we hold, in ourselves, who we have been in the past. Someone who I was speaking to earlier last week said that, uh, the identity that she's had has always been behind the scenes. Not really an out in front. And so it can be. A bit of a process getting from that old identity into a new identity, which is suddenly you're going from, or it could actually be. The second, example is a current client of mine who, actually had an established business and was never actually the face of the business. So the business did the promotion entirely on its own, independently without the founder necessarily needing to be the face of the business. And so there can be that shift between. The identity that you may have once had versus say, if you are starting out, then the identity that you have, you know, that your family sees you as, or your colleagues see you as, and then this new identity or this new brand where you'll actively be eroding the part of you that some people may have known you as. And you're building this new identity, uh, where people will be starting to get to know you as, and that shift. In our own minds can actually be a lot more amplified than say for somebody else, because for somebody else, they'll be taking in the perspective, they'll be looking at the thing and not everybody will agree with what it is that you have to say. And that's where the judgment does come in. That's where the fear comes in. But it's really about, again, being rooted back in that self-belief with the clarity of knowing what exactly you stand for. And with clarity then comes. Momentum with clarity comes confidence. And so that's part of the reason why two of those are my themes, is that I really work towards clarity because unless I give clarity to people, they're not gonna be able to get the confidence that they need in order to, in order to then build on the connections that they need to have in order to then be successful in what they do. So a really big gift. Of my voice themes is clarity, is because I'm seeking out clarity and looking at patterns and, making deductions from the patterns that I'm seeing in the marketplace. And obviously sharing that within my podcast for you as a gift for me to be able to share, the things that I'm learning so that you don't have to be finding out things the hard way. And that is really my hope for this podcast is really about reframing visibility in a way that is specifically for female founders when there is so much noise out there. So I will just say that, I could say a lot about the fear of self-promotion and obviously activate within, um, my business is a place where people can, uh, sound more like themselves and, and offer that. But regardless of what, which bucket you are in, I'm just gonna say, I've covered five different scenarios. Whether you are, lost in the joy of why you started the business in the first place, or you're not sure of whether this will work, whether you are posting, thinking. You have to, then with a strategy that is platform agnostic. Or if you're ready to ditch the energies from, that are bringing you down or separate yourself from the fear of self promotion, then before you either chuck it in or fall prey to yet another quick fix. There are only really three things that you will need to do to be able to speak and present online, uh, with your own unique perspective and with your own voice. And to do that as a female founder, you will need one of three things. One is you will need to create as. Single core offering that people can know you for. The second is that you will need to develop a voice that is based in three things, brand positioning and perspective that will keep you top of mind. And the third is actually developing that unique sales mechanism to fill your pipeline and test and learn approach that improves over time. And what I'm gonna say is this, that the execution of these three things is highly de. On whether you are established with a proven offer and things that you have already done and, and how much cred and authority you have in the marketplace versus if you're sta if you're just starting out. And the path to both these things are two very different things. So it is the, these are the three things that you will need. In order for you to then feel like you can speak and present from a point of view, perspective, and brand that is uniquely yours. So if you are finding yourself, ready to fall back in love with your business in this season of self-love, then, and if you're find, if you're finding yourself speaking from either obligation. Exhaustion or perhaps strategy first thinking instead of showcasing your voice with your values. Building desire not only in what you offer, but actually falling in love with what you offer and showcasing perspectives and positioning with identity shifting activities, uh, and then sharing those insights that you know you can share through. Knowing what cards to hold and what cards to fold. When you're sharing those insights, you're sharing without oversharing, and more, most importantly, with an embodied experience that showcases the impact that you're wanting to make and creating room for it, then know that the cue to this. Is your next steps, which is making a plan that helps you fall in love with your business again, so that you can amplify your impact you wanna make. Because the exact execution of each lies heavily, as I said on your personal circumstances. And if you want to know how to best do that, I've shared an opportunity here, this episode in the show notes to help you craft your next steps. So I'm gonna close off this by saying that you can fall in love with your business by doing. What feels like you, again, I'll leave you with this soundbite, which I thought was really cool, which is your voices, your compass, your values are your structure and your energy is your strategy. And when you bring your voice back to the center, everything begins to come alive again.