45 I The Hardest Business Lesson I Ever Learned In My Myofunctional Therapy Business

Have you ever had a moment in your business where everything felt like it was working… until suddenly it wasn’t?

I’ve been there.

I had a year where everything clicked — clients coming in, revenue high, momentum strong — and I thought I had finally “figured it out.”

But the following year, things slowed down just enough to ignore… until they couldn’t be ignored anymore.

By the end of that year, I had made over six figures less, and the hardest part wasn’t the financial hit — it was realizing I didn’t understand why.

That was my wake-up call.

I learned that success built on instinct isn’t sustainable.

If we don’t know why something is working, we can’t repeat it.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing the three shifts that helped me move from accidental success to repeatable, predictable, confident growth in my myofunctional therapy business.

If your business feels inconsistent, unpredictable, or fragile — this one is for you.
 

Hugs and high fives 🤗...and as always...

Cheering you on!

Carmen

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Chapters

• 0:00 From Highs To Slowdown
• 4:44 The Trap Of Accidental Success
• 9:21 Shift One: Slow Down To Evaluate
• 12:56 Shift Two: Practice Constraint
• 15:31 Shift Three: Make Data-Driven Decisions
• 17:06 Applying The Shifts To Your Niche

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:10

There was a season in my business where everything looked like it was working. I had just come off of my biggest year ever. Love that. Multiple six figures, clients coming in, everything was just like cooking along. And in my gut, I thought, well, this is fine. It's sustainable. It's gonna last. Everything is wonderful. The thing is, is over the next year, it didn't. Things started to slow down, not all at once, just a little bit here and a little bit there. But I realized in the end that I had earned a lot less money than the year before. Like, I'm talking over six figures. If you've finished your myofunctional therapy training and feel stuck on how to start, grow, or simplify your business, welcome my friend. I'm Carmen, a dental hygienist who once sat right where you are, trained, motivated, but totally unsure how to turn that training into a real profitable business. If you're ready to attract consistent clients, create predictable income, and simplify your business, grab your coffee and your courage, my friend. Let's make your Maya business make sense and a whole lot of dollars. Well, hello friend. The universe is absolutely watching out for you today because you're here. And this podcast was placed on your path and on your heart today. And I truly believe it might be exactly what you need to hear today. There was a season in my business where everything looked like it was working. I had just come off of my biggest year ever. Love that. Multiple six figures, clients coming in, everything was just like cooking along. And in my gut, I thought, well, this is fine. It's sustainable, it's gonna last. Everything is wonderful. Uh the thing is, is over the next year, it didn't. Things started to slow down, not all at once, just a little bit here and a little bit there. But I realized in the end that I had earned a lot less money than the year before. Like, I'm talking over six figures. And here's the kicker. I didn't even know why. At first, I told myself, like, hey, you should be, you know, happy about all the abundance that you have and all the money that you've already made, you'll be fine. Which I really was, but deep down I knew that something had shifted the market, my messaging, my system, something. And I hadn't been paying attention. And that, my friend, was my wake-up call. It taught me that success without a plan isn't sustainable. You can build something incredible by instinct, but if you can't explain why it's working, then you won't know how to fix it when it stops working. Right? I call that the trap of accidental success. When I first started, and for a long time, I really had the attitude of, well, it worked once, so it'll always work. And that embarrassingly made me resistant to advice. And whenever I ran into something that was confusing or hard, I would actually just stop trying to figure it out because why bother? I already had proof that the way that I was doing it worked, and it did until it didn't. The market shifted, my business slowed down. Suddenly, things that once brought me success had stopped working. And because I had never tracked why things worked, I didn't have a roadmap for how to go back and fix it. So here's what I realized: winning without knowing why is actually more dangerous than losing. Let me say that again. Winning without knowing why is actually more dangerous than losing. So one of my mentors said something once that completely reframed my thinking. He's told me it is better to know why you lost than to win and not understand why. And it landed with me because when you lose with clarity, you get data that you can use to improve. And when you win by chance, by accident, you're standing on shaky ground with nothing to repeat and nothing to build on. And that, my friend, is when I knew I had to change how I ran my business. So in this episode, I am going to share with you three big shifts that really turned things around for me. Number one, slow down to speed up. I have, I'm embarrassed to say this, but I had to stop rushing from one thing to the next and started taking time to evaluate. Not only just taking the time to evaluate, but understanding what that data meant. Okay. I had to sit back and ask myself what's working, what's not working, and what's going to change. And then I wrote it down. For example, August 21st, 2023. Here's what's working. Here's what isn't. And here's the change that I made. Now, giving that date was just some date that I threw out. There, typically I evaluate my metrics at within the first couple days of the new month. So, say in that example, it was August, I would have been evaluating July. Okay. We're not evaluating things every week. You've got to have some time. So I typically typically like a month, a quarter, six months. It just depends on what it is. Okay. So the point here is I wrote it down. And then weeks later, I could look back to see if that change really helped, if it hurt. Um, that reflection gave me some clarity, and clarity gives strategy. My friend, I want you to, if you're multitasking, come back to me because I want you to hear this. Slow is the pace that greatness grows. And I think one of my biggest problems was just going so fast that um I just wasn't taking the time. So that was big shift number one. Okay, slow down to speed up. The second one was to practice constraint. I am working on this a lot with my students right now. That second shift for me was to narrow my focus. I had been working to serve everybody. Okay, if you've been with me for a while, you have heard me say you can't be everything to everybody. And in the course of my business, I have absolutely tried to serve infinite avatars, way too many types of clients. And this left my message fuzzy, unclear, and my offers confusing. So instead, I studied the 20% of my clients who were really 80% over 80% of my business, and they were also the easiest and the dreamiest, and they were the best fit for me. I had to dig into things like what made them so great to work with, and why did they get such good results? And where where could I find more of them? And then I built an offer designed just for those clients, and I priced it accordingly. And if you know me, that doesn't mean that it was cheap. Okay, so here's the message I want you to take away. Constraint created clarity for me, and that clarity gave me momentum in my business again. All right, and then the third shift was to make data-driven decisions. This moved me away from emotional decision making. Okay, I got the emotions out of it. So before, if business slowed down, I would um either ignore it or just stick my head in this end, or I'd spire spiral. Now I look at data. If traffic to my website dropped by 50%, then of course it would make sense that fewer eyeballs and fewer clients are going to be reaching out. That's not a personal failure and it doesn't need to be a personal attack. It's just a data point, okay? Business is a numbers game. If you need a hundred people to see your work, your blog, your your content, whatever it is, before they actually before you actually have one person to book an exam, then if your website had 50% uh visitors, then clearly that's less eyeballs on your site. That would explain the slowdown. So you gotta be on top of those numbers. So the key is to focus on useful data. Okay, we're not talking about vanity metrics, we're I don't care about likes, I don't care about follows. Um, business is not a popularity contest. Okay, so why does this matter for you? If you are like many of my students, you're trying to build your myofunctional therapy business on the side, okay, the side of your maybe your full-time or your part-time job. And I want to encourage you not to chase accidental wins, they feel really good in the moment, but they're not going to pay your bills long term. The sustainable path is to slow down, practice constraint, and make decisions from data, not drama. And the good news is you don't have to do this alone. So you can hop into a coaching program with me. Um when I work with students, I take you right through the step-by-step business building, all this stuff strategy right from the beginning. So you don't have to guess. Um, if you are DIYing it and you're just uh listening to me for help on how to do this, I am going to tell you when you're practicing that constraint, you've got to definitely be nailing your who, know very intimately who your who is, um, and and set up an offer or an experience that definitely is just for that person. You can't be everything to everybody. So to sum it all back up, you have to slow down to speed up. Okay, slow down, practice constraint and make data-driven decisions. These three shifts took me from accidental success to repeatable success, and they can do the same for you. And that is absolutely what I want you to experience. That's what I want you to walk away from from this podcast and from my teachings, is not to just, you know, earn the money, but to be able to make consistent repeatable revenue. Okay. Um, one last thing before I go, my friend. If this episode hits home for you, do me a favor. Go show me some love. Head on over to Apple Podcasts. Yes, it has to be an Apple Podcast. Scroll all the way to the bottom and leave a review. Um, this is gonna help me get this important podcast into the hands of more people just like you who are struggling, and it really seriously means the world to us here over at headquarters. All right, so that is all I have for you today, my friend. Until next time, go build a life you were bonkers about, and I will be back soon to teach you more about starting, growing, and simplifying your myofunctional therapy business.