102. Failing or Evolving: How to Know When to Quit Your VA/OBM Business (Or Just Pivot)

Ever lie awake at 11 PM wondering if you should just shut your business down? You're making money, clients seem happy, but internally you feel exhausted and disconnected from work that used to light you up.

If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you.

In this solo episode, I'm breaking down the difference between business failure and business evolution - and why confusing the two can lead you to walk away from something that just needs to shift.

Sometimes what feels like failure is actually your business nudging you toward growth. The trick is learning how to tell the difference.

Key Points Covered:

✨ Why exhaustion makes you confuse temporary discomfort with permanent failure

✨ The three reflection questions that reveal whether you need to quit or evolve

✨ How to identify if your problem is emotional (burnout) or structural (offer misalignment)

✨ The difference between craving rest versus needing reinvention

✨ A real client story: from "I want to burn it down" to clarity and confidence

✨ How evolution shows up as discomfort, disinterest, and sometimes irritation with work you used to love

The Three Questions to Guide You:

1. Do I still care about the impact of my work?
2. Am I craving rest or reinvention?
3. Is the problem emotional or structural?

If you're sitting here unsure about whether to walk away or evolve what you're doing, that's exactly what I work through with my 1:1 clients inside of Expansion. The very first phase, Illuminate, is all about getting crystal clear on what you actually want - because you cannot make good decisions about your business when you don't know what you're building toward.

Most of my clients come in thinking they need to completely start over. But after Illuminate, they realize they just need clarity on where they're going and permission to evolve.

Thank you for being a part of the Soulpreneur Scaling Stories community!

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Andrea Elibero: Andrea here, your host and passionate business coach and scaling strategist for soulful service providers and coaches. Welcome to another episode of Solepreneur Scaling Stories. Have you ever wanted to look behind the curtain of your fellow entrepreneur's business to see what actually went into scaling it?

[00:00:22] Well, you are in for a treat 'cause that's exactly what we are doing here. In each episode, we will be uncovering the truth of the lessons and the stories behind what it truly takes for sold entrepreneurs to scale their businesses intentionally. I'm hoping that their stories will help you to unlock the true potential of your business so you can create your own soulful, abundant, and aligned laptop lifestyle through intentional scaling.

[00:00:46] So whether you're just starting out on your scaling journey or you're a seasoned entrepreneur seeking inspiration, this episode has something incredible in store for you. Are you ready to rise, grow, and create a business that fully supports your dream life? Well, let's dive in. [00:01:00] Before we begin, make sure to hit that subscribe buttons.

[00:01:03] You never miss an empowering episode filled with real stories and soulful insights.

[00:01:10] You're staring at your laptop. It's 11:00 PM You're feeling that familiar weight in your chest. The business you built is just not lighting you up anymore like it used to. Maybe you're even thinking about walking away completely. But the thing is that sometimes what feels like failure is actually your business nudging you towards growth.

[00:01:34] So today we are going to figure out which one you are actually experiencing. Welcome to Solepreneur Scaling Stories. I am Andrea business coach for VAs and O BMS who want to stop spinning their wheels and start building businesses that actually support their dream lives. So if you have been feeling.

[00:01:51] Disconnected from your business lately. Know that you might just be in this messy middle of something bigger. So picture [00:02:00] this, right? So Monday morning rolls around and instead of feeling excited about your client calls, you feel heavy. The work that used to energize you now feels like something that you have to push through.

[00:02:12] Your to-do list is full, but nothing on its sparks joy. There's no like Marie Koning happening here, right? Like you don't wanna keep any of it. And maybe you've even had this thought late at night, like, oh, should I shut this down? Should I go back to a nine to five? Maybe I'm just not cut out for this life anymore, like I thought.

[00:02:31] And the thing that makes it even trickier is that externally, everything might look fine, right? You're making money, your clients are fine, the work is fine. People tell you, they're like excited to work with you. You have these markers of success, but internally you feel exhausted. You feel over it. You just feel disconnected from all of it.

[00:02:54] And this is exactly the point where many business owners make decisions that they later regret. [00:03:00] What's happening here is simple, but it's sneaky. It's that you can choose. Exhaustion and confuse it with the truth, and that confusion can make you want to walk away from something that just needs to evolve.

[00:03:18] So I'm going to say that again, is that oftentimes you're confusing exhaustion with truth, and it's this confusion that can make you want to walk away from something that just needs to evolve. And evolution is an interesting thing, right? Because evolution is rarely clean or glamorous. It actually shows up as discomfort.

[00:03:42] It shows up as disinterest and sometimes it shows up as irritation with work that you used to love. And that's not because you're not cut out for what you're doing, it's because your capacity, your desires, and you have changed. So think of it this way, right? [00:04:00] So you could think of a VA who used to love checking off admin tasks and was super happy doing anything right?

[00:04:06] So now though, that was before, but now she zones out during the inbox management because now what she really wants to do is strategize with her clients. She hasn't. Failed at her business. She hasn't lost her skill. She's outgrown the form in which she helps her clients. Or another example, you can consider an OBM who loves her first clients, but she finds herself resenting constant slack notifications and these quick questions that her clients have and all these fires she has to put out.

[00:04:37] She doesn't hate the work. She hates the structure that she built around it. So if that makes sense, right. You can still love what you're doing. You can love parts of it. You can evolve in terms of your skill or in terms of your offer or just in terms of the structure of your current offer. And this is evolution.

[00:04:59] [00:05:00] Evolution asks you to outgrow what used to fit and shedding an old version of yourself always feels uncomfortable. That discomfort. It's not a warning or anything like that. It's a signal that it is time to refine and not quit. So think of that, right? So this evolution, it's messy and it's shedding an old version of yourself, and it means that now it's a signal to refine.

[00:05:27] But sometimes it is time to completely change course. So how do you know? How can you tell when it's time to end something or when it is time to evolve something? I have three questions to guide you through this evolution, and I invite you with these three questions to. You know, if you're like in a car, you can't do this.

[00:05:50] Like listen, but come back to it later. And if now you can pause, like take out your journal or your notes and really reflect on these questions. There's only three as I go through them. [00:06:00] So here is the first question to reflect on is do I still care about the impact of my work? Now notice that I said impact and not.

[00:06:11] The tasks, not the things that you are doing, because if you still light up helping somebody get organized or helping somebody grow their business or seeing the transformation in a client's business, that is evolution. The delivery method might need to change, but the purpose is still alive within you.

[00:06:32] But if you truly feel nothing. If you don't really care about the transformation, if it's not lighting you up, that's a signal that it might be time for a completely different path, and that's okay too. So question one was, do I still care about the impact of my work?

[00:06:51] Question two is, am I craving rest or reinvention? Rest [00:07:00] is a pause. Exactly what you think it is, right? It's a pause from the hustle, a constant. Creation, the calls the always being on, whereas reinvention is exploring something new. Different clients, different offers or ways of showing up. So confusing. The two here can also lead to frustration.

[00:07:18] So take the time to understand which your heart is really asking for. Do you just need a rest? A little break, a little pause, or do you truly need a reinvention of what you're doing? And to think this through, go out in nature, be quiet. Sit with your own intuition. Don't talk about this constantly with other people and get their input.

[00:07:44] Literally, just be quiet and see what comes through. So question one was, do I still care about the impact of my work? Question two, am I craving rest or reinvention? And question three is, is the problem emotional [00:08:00] or structural? If the problem is emotional, that means you are burnt out. There's comparison, there's fear, there's boredom, there's resentment, there's a lot of things happening, right?

[00:08:15] Obviously emotionally, if it is structural, there is some sort of offer misalignment. Maybe there are some missing boundaries or pricing that doesn't quite match your lifestyle, or maybe there are exhausting marketing systems. There's something more. Structural logistical going on here. So an emotional problem, needs space and support a structural problem.

[00:08:40] Needs redesign. A lot of times it's a bit of both, but you address them differently. So again, is the problem emotional or structural? Uh, you burnt out, there's bored or resentment, fear these things or is it just a. A problem of offer misalignment, boundaries, pricing, marketing [00:09:00] systems that don't quite work.

[00:09:01] So how do you support yourself through each of these? Now, I'll give you an example of somebody who was contemplating this. Am I failing or thinking of they were failing. I recently worked with a client, I'll call her Rachel, for the purpose of the story, who sent me a message one night that. Was just kind of in a panic and she said, you know, I really just wanna burn it down and just quit.

[00:09:24] I'm so exhausted over all of this. She is a talented OBM. She had been building her business for a couple of years, and recently she had this wave of interest and it was really cool, and she was so excited. People were reaching out to her left and right. She was booking discovery calls and it felt like everything was finally clicking for her offer, but then something started happening, right?

[00:09:44] These clients that she got, they all kind of came from a similar place and they. Would sign on. But now they weren't engaging, they were missing appointments. They wouldn't complete the work that they needed to do on their end. And when Rachel would follow up, [00:10:00] the response was, oh yeah, life is overwhelming.

[00:10:02] You know, I can't keep up right now. I'll get to it later. Or maybe. You know, I'll come back later and, and do this, or let's kind of stop early, things like this. So one by one. Now this big wave started ending. Clients started dropping off, and naturally Rachel spiraled, right? People know, I'm sure you've been here, so people know this place all too well.

[00:10:21] Like, oh, maybe my offers are wrong. Maybe my services aren't that valuable. Maybe I'm doing the wrong thing. Or maybe I'm just not cut, cut out for this. Maybe I should just return to what I was doing before. Now, if this sounds familiar, don't worry. I'm going to let you know what we did. So what I did was looked at what's really happening and what was really happening was that her offers were not the problem.

[00:10:47] Her skills were not the problem. She wasn't the problem. The problem, the disconnect was in the people that she had been attracting. Again, like I said, many were from the same community and they just didn't [00:11:00] have the capacity yet. They weren't aligned with her offer. They loved her and wanted to be aligned, but they weren't there.

[00:11:07] Some had the financial means, but not the mental bandwidth. Others were dealing with personal situations and they weren't really as dedicated to their business growth, They genuinely. Harvard apparently wanted what she offered, but they weren't ready to do the work. This, this is such good data, right?

[00:11:26] And so now once Rachel could see clearly what the situation actually was. That's when things started to shift. She realized that, no, I actually love what I do. I don't need to burn it all down. So what we, the plan we came up with was that she needed to adjust her marketing to speak to business owners who had the financial capacity and the mental space to invest, to build a relationships with people who already served her ideal clients, so other service providers.

[00:11:55] To consider creating a lower touch option for people who weren't ready for her [00:12:00] premium offerings, and to trust that her work was incredibly valuable. She just needed to get it in front of the right people at the right time. So we made a plan for this, and she felt so much better. So what I told her is what I want to also tell you, you're allowed to make decisions from a place of truth and intuition, so.

[00:12:23] When you're making these big, big decisions saying, do I want to just quit this altogether? Make sure that it comes from truth and intuition and not from frustration and desperation. That's the difference between quitting and evolving. And remember, like I said before, your business is trying to tell you something.

[00:12:43] It's probably not quit, it's probably evolve, right? But this is up to you to determine. The middle is messy. It's confusion, it's doubt, it's, I don't know what I'm doing anymore, but clarity does not [00:13:00] come from forcing an answer. It comes from space. It comes from better questions, and it comes from remembering why you started and checking in to see is it still there?

[00:13:11] So here is your reflection for today. What if nothing is wrong? What if I am just ready for more? And this is not of a place of, oh, I should be further along, or a comparison, or anything like that. It's from genuine curiosity about what you actually want now and is it different from what you wanted before?

[00:13:36] Your business can grow with you, your offers can evolve, and you are allowed to want different things than you wanted even a year ago. So if you're sitting here still unsure about whether it's best to walk away or if you just need to evolve what you are doing, that is exactly what I do with my one-on-one clients inside of expansion.

[00:13:58] The very, very first [00:14:00] phase is called Illuminate, and it's It's all about getting crystal clear on what you actually want. We work through assessments, explore your values, and create a detailed vision of your dream life. And because you cannot make good decisions about your business when you don't know what you're actually.

[00:14:17] Building toward. So most of my clients come in thinking that they need to completely start over. But after this phase, after Illuminate, they realize that they just need a clarity on where they're going and permission to evolve. So if you are ready to stop second guessing and start making decisions from clarity, check out expansion, it's linked below, or DME evolve on Instagram, and that is it.

[00:14:42] For this week, and I will see you guys next time, and please come over and say hello on Instagram or on Threads or LinkedIn and let me know what you think. Thank you so much for joining us today. I [00:15:00] really hope you found inspiration and insights from today's episode. You know, scaling your business intentionally and from the inside out is a transformational process, but I'm here to support you every step of the way. Head on over to dancing leaf solutions.com/resources for free tools to help you do just that.

[00:15:17] And thank you again for being a part of the Solepreneur Scaling Stories community. Your presence and dedication to growth inspiring me every day.