Lazy or Misdirected? Pt.1: Hard Work That Doesn't Pay Off

You’re putting in the work—so why aren’t the results showing up?
This Soul Spa pause explores the difference between being lazy and being misdirected.

In this reflective Soul Spa moment on the EmpowerHER Business Podcast, Linette gently reframes a common experience for Black women entrepreneurs in their first five years: working hard but not seeing the growth you expected. When outcomes don’t match effort, it’s easy to assume you’re not doing enough. But often, the issue isn’t laziness—it’s direction. Your energy may be going toward strategies, tasks, or expectations that no longer align with where your business needs to go.

This grounding pause invites you to step back, release self-judgment, and reassess where your effort is flowing. Sometimes relief comes not from doing more—but from redirecting what you’re already doing.

In this Soul Spa episode, you’ll experience:

• A reframe of “laziness” as possible misalignment or misdirection 
• Insight into why effort doesn’t always equal results 
• A grounding check-in to reassess where your energy is going 
• Permission to pivot without questioning your work ethic 
• A gentle reset to support clarity and aligned action 

This episode is part of The Soul Spa — short solo pauses you can return to whenever you need a moment of grounding.

From Busy to Building free download: https://forms.gle/HDmMg8wXWn72tVPg6

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello and welcome back to the Empower Her Business Podcast Soul Spot series, where our intention is to bring you food for your soul. This is your space to pause, to breathe, and to come back to yourself. Here we navigate through the nuances and internal challenges of building a great business, bringing insight, clarity, and tapping into our inner guidance. Over the next couple of episodes, we're going to be talking about something that I see come up a lot from women in business. This feeling of I'm working, I'm showing up, but my business isn't growing the way I thought it would. Like the effort is there, but the results don't quite match. So over these next four episodes, we're going to slow that all the way down and really look at what's underneath it because it's not always what you think. So to begin, I want to ask you a question, not a harsh one, not one meant to judge you, but one that might open something up for you. The question is: are you lazy or could you be misdirected? See, I've been sitting with this because I've had conversations with so many women lately. Women who are showing up, who are working, who are doing a lot in their business, and yet when they really slow down and look at it, the growth they expected, the revenue they thought would follow, it's just not there. In the first place, our mind goes is maybe I'm not disciplined enough, maybe I'm not consistent, maybe I'm just not doing enough. And I want to gently interrupt this because what I've seen over and over again is that it's not a lack of effort, it's all about your direction. You can be working every single day and still not be moving your business forward. You can be busy but not building. And those are two very different things because there are activities in your business that feel productive. They look good, they check a box, they give you something to say you did today, but they're not actually connected to growth. And here's the thing: no one really teaches us how to tell the difference. So what happens is we stay in motion but not in momentum. I'm gonna say that again. We stay in motion but not in momentum. We stay active, but we're not expanding. And after a while it starts to wear on us. Because then it's not just about our business, it's about how we see ourselves. We start questioning our discipline, our consistency, our capacity, our ability. When the real question is not am I doing enough? It's am I doing the right things for where I am right now? Because if you've been showing up and you've been trying and putting in time and energy into your business, I want you to consider something. What if it's not about the time you're putting in? What if it's not about being consistent? What if you've just been pouring your energy into areas that don't actually move your business forward? So today I don't want you to push harder, I don't want you to do more, I want you to pause. Yes? Pause and ask yourself, what did I spend my time on last week? And then go one layer deeper. Did any of that actually lead to revenue or move me closer to it? And don't ask this in a judgmental way. What you want to do is open up awareness because awareness is where everything starts to shift. So you're not behind, you're not hopeless, you're not lazy. You may simply need a different direction. In the next episode, we're gonna look at where your time is actually going because being busy and actually building something that grows are not the same thing. And if you're listening to this and thinking, okay, I feel this, but I don't actually know what I should be focusing on instead. I created something for you. A CEO guide titled From Busy to Building to help you see where your time is going and what actually leads to growth. You can find it in the show notes. Alright, let's take a breath here. If today's experience resonated, I'm glad you're here. I invite you to trust what's stirring inside you. We'll continue this conversation in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourself, and I'll talk to you soon on the next Soul Spa. Be well, I'm not sure.