If your business used to feel easier and now it feels like you’re pushing twice as hard for half the results, this episode is for you. In this conversation, I’m breaking down why the strategy that built your business won’t keep growing it, especially if your business took off between 2020 and 2023.

We’re talking about the subtle signs your business model has expired, why more content and more execution aren’t fixing the problem, and what’s actually happening in today’s more sophisticated, skeptical market.

This isn’t about burning it all down. It’s about recognizing when your external strategy is out of sync with your internal authority, and how to realign your business so it actually fits the version of you running it today.

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Why the Strategy That Built Your Business Won’t Keep Growing It

If you’ve been in business for more than a couple of years, there’s a moment that sneaks up on you.

It’s not always dramatic, and it’s definitely not always obvious, but it’s real: there comes a point where the thing that built your business stops being the thing that grows it.

At first, it can feel subtle, like you’re doing all the same things you used to do, and they’re still “working” on paper… but not in the way they used to. 

Things feel a little harder to sell. You’re putting out content, and it’s getting engagement, but it’s not converting to sales.

You’re working just as hard, and maybe you’re even working harder, and the results are not matching the effort anymore.

And the instinct here—believe me, I get it, because I’ve done it too—is to immediately look for what you’re doing wrong.

What are you missing?

What new tool do you need to add or what new system do you need to use? And what strategy haven’t you tried yet?

So you add more content. You try a new platform. Then you hire somebody to fix your copy. Maybe you join yet another program. Some of it helps a little, but nothing actually moves the needle the way you need it to.

Here’s what I want to offer you, and if you’ve been feeling that “something’s off” in your business, I want you to read this slowly: I don’t think the problem is what you’re missing.

I think the problem is that the strategy you used to build your business was designed for a specific moment in time, and that moment has passed… and nobody told you, when you were building it, that the process you were using had an expiration date.

So you kept running it. You kept trying to optimize it. You kept trying to make it work harder. Not realizing your issue isn’t execution.

Your issue is that the business doesn’t fit you anymore.

And that’s what this is about.

Why Things Worked in the First Place (And Why That Matters)

Before we talk about what needs to change, I want to name why the old strategy worked in the first place, because I’m not interested in shaming you for building your business the way you did.

If you’ve been in the online coaching and education industry for any meaningful amount of time, you’ve seen it: the things that worked really well—and honestly, really easily—back in 2020 through 2023 are not working the same way anymore.

And I’m not saying that as a dramatic “the sky is falling” statement. I’m saying it as someone who has been in this industry for over 14 years, who started my business in 2014, and who has seen enough cycles, patterns, and waves to recognize what was actually happening.

2020 through 2023 was an anomaly.

The pandemic pushed everyone online all at once, and it created a buying environment that rewarded very specific things.

A New Buying Environment

It rewarded high volume. This was really before AI became a common tool, and if you could put out a lot of stuff—post more, be everywhere, dominate the feed, be on stories, be on your newsfeed, be on TikTok, be on Instagram, be on whatever platform was hot—the more volume you could pour into your content and visibility, the more your business would grow.

It also rewarded big, sweeping promises. Juicy transformation language that was broad enough to appeal to lots of people, and often made promises that people couldn’t keep.

And it rewarded getting as many people in the door as possible as part of your launch strategy. Most launch advice wasn’t asking, “Are these people actually a good fit?” It was asking, “How do we get the conversion rate up?”

It wasn’t focused on qualifying clients. Rather, it was focused on the volume of buyers.

It was also incredibly fast-paced. A lot of us had more time then. Time wasn’t an issue for many audiences either. People were home, scrolling, and there was this energy of, “This is my moment to change my life.”

Creating for New Conditions

Now here’s the part that matters: none of this means you built your business wrong.

If you started your business between 2020 and 2023, there are pros and cons. Starting then might have gotten you off the ground faster, but it also trained you to think things should be easier than they actually are.

And if you started before 2020, you still got pulled into that energy. I did too. I launched my NBA program in 2020. We were all creating new things.

So this isn’t a “you should have known better” conversation.

This is a “the conditions changed, and your strategy was built for those conditions” conversation.

And the mistake a lot of people are making right now is assuming that what worked back then should still be working now at the same rate, with the same inputs, the same perspective, the same methodology, the same strategy. 

When it isn’t, they assume they’re doing something wrong, or they need to try harder, or they need to tweak it more.

That’s not the game anymore.

The Market Shift Nobody Wants to Admit Is Forcing a Business Model Shift

I know everyone’s talking about market shifts, and I don’t want to belabor it, but we have to name the realities that are driving this.

Buyers are more sophisticated now. They have more access to information. They’ve tried more programs (and failed at more programs.)

They’ve been burned by big promises from hyped-up offers that didn’t deliver.

And when people have been disappointed enough times, they become skeptical, and then they become selective.

That doesn’t mean your business is doomed. And it doesn’t mean nobody buys anymore.

It means the buyer on the other side of the screen is not the same buyer who was there in 2021.

They’re doing their homework and asking better questions. They’re more cautious with their money.

And honestly, I think that’s a good thing.

I don’t think anyone should be blindly jumping into a program without any clue whether it’s actually a good fit. But it does mean that “big claims without the internal infrastructure to back them up” don’t land the way they used to.

At the same time, we’re dealing with another massive shift that’s changing the entire visibility game: AI.

Before AI, high-volume content was a competitive advantage because it was hard. If you were willing to put yourself out there constantly, that signaled authority, commitment, and effort.

Now, people can put out content at a rate that is unbelievable.

I’m going to give you a real example from my own business: it used to take me 10 to 15 hours to write a blog post. Now, using AI tools to repurpose a transcript I spoke—like a podcast episode—we can generate a written version in 10 to 20 minutes with editing.

That’s insane.

And because of this, volume is no longer a signal of authority.

If it’s not good content, it’s just adding noise to an already noisy market. People are exhausted by crappy content because now AI can help you proliferate garbage in a way that wasn’t possible before.

Even if your content is great, it’s not automatically going to get the same eyeballs it did five years ago, because the feed is flooded.

So if you’re still trying to win by posting more, you’re playing the 2021 game in the 2026 market.

And that’s why it feels hard.

The Competitive Advantage Now Isn’t Volume, It’s Depth

Here’s the good news, and I want you to really hear this if you’re an actual expert who has been doing real work with real clients:

Depth is the competitive advantage right now.

The people who are winning are not the ones posting the most. They’re the ones saying something specific enough, clear enough, powerful enough that the right person stops and goes, “Holy cow, that’s me. Tell me more.”

And when I say “stop the scroll,” I’m not talking about rage bait or AI cat videos. I’m talking about recognition.

The right message, for the right person, in the right moment, with enough specificity that it hits their nervous system and makes them feel seen.

That requires depth.

It requires going narrower and deeper, not broader and louder.

And if you’ve been in business even a couple of years, your expertise has deepened. That’s normal. You’ve learned, refined, and seen patterns. You’ve made mistakes and you’ve gotten better.

But here’s the problem I’m seeing over and over with established experts: your business model, your offers, and your messaging often haven’t kept pace with your depth.

So you keep trying to run an old model that was built for the version of you that existed a few years ago, and now you’re trying to force your current self into it.

It’s like putting on somebody else’s clothes. Even if they’re “nice clothes,” they don’t fit, and you can feel it.

I used this analogy recently because it’s honestly the best way I know to describe it: it’s like the biblical principle of new wine and old wineskins. If you put new wine into an old wineskin, it can’t stretch, and it breaks.

Sometimes the answer isn’t to stretch the old container harder.

Sometimes the answer is a new container.

The Real Problem Isn’t Your Funnel, It’s That Your Business Doesn’t Fit You Anymore

This is the part where people get uncomfortable, because it’s much easier to say, “I need a new funnel” than it is to say, “I have outgrown the container I built.”

But if you’ve been feeling tired, burnt out, resistant to showing up, resentful about content, or like you’re dragging yourself through your business, I want you to consider that this may not be a discipline problem.

It may be a sign that the internal foundation of your business is no longer matching the external structure you’re trying to run.

I’ve had conversations with people who are making multi-six figures, even seven figures, who are ready to quit—not because they can’t make money, but because they look up one day and think, “What the F am I doing? I don’t even like this anymore. None of this is what I built this for.”

And I say this with a lot of empathy.

I’m the primary breadwinner in my house. I have two kids under four. My baby is still breastfeeding and doesn’t sleep through the night. I have a team to pay. I deeply understand “nose to the grindstone.”

If you don’t pause for years, and you don’t look at the internal alignment piece, you can wake up in a business that “works” but feels like it’s slowly draining your life force.

That isn’t proof that you’re not cut out for entrepreneurship.

It isn’t a character flaw.

And it doesn’t automatically mean you should quit your business, especially if you’re like me and there is no plan B. Entrepreneurship or bust. I cannot imagine a world where I’m requesting vacation time and leaving my house for eight hours a day.

So if you’re in it, you’re in it.

The question becomes: how do you stop forcing yourself to run a business model that doesn’t fit?

What People Try (That Won’t Fix This)

When your business feels off, the default move is to “fix the external.” And listen, I’m a legitimate strategist. We build and audit funnels. We help with messaging. I am not anti-strategy.

But I want to be really clear: there are specific things that people try when the problem is internal, and none of these solve it.

More content written for the wrong person doesn’t fix anything. You can be incredible at content and still hit a brick wall if you’re speaking to an old audience, an old niche, an old avatar that you don’t feel connected to anymore.

Running ads to an offer you don’t fully connect with anymore isn’t the move. I love ads—we run ads, and my husband is an ads manager—but you should not put money behind selling an offer you feel “eh” about.

Hiring a copywriter before you’ve done positioning work is like repainting a house with a cracked foundation. You can hire the best copywriter in the world, and if you’re not clear on who you’re talking to, what you actually stand for now, and what you’re really selling, it won’t fix the problem.

Another launch strategy—a webinar, a challenge, a relaunch, a different hook—won’t magically create alignment. Relaunching the same model and hoping it lands differently when you don’t even feel fully aligned with what you’re selling is a recipe for more burnout.

And here’s the line I want you to remember, because it sums up the entire trap:

You cannot out-execute an alignment problem.

I have tried. Trust me. It does not work.

The Wineskin Problem: When Your Expertise Evolves but Your Business Doesn’t

One of the most confronting realizations I’ve had in the last few months is this: a lot of what I was doing in my programs and in how I was working with clients was based on a version of me that existed a few years ago.

That version of me did not have the level of depth and insight I have now.

And if your ability to serve people has grown, if your ability to transform lives has grown, your business has to reflect that publicly.

Sometimes it still “works” for a certain person, but you personally have evolved past it, and it’s not working for you in the way you know is possible.

That’s the nuance people miss.

They think, “If it still works, why change it?” But you can have something that works and still feel like you’re suffocating inside of it.

And you don’t have to keep doing it.

You might be due for a new container.

The Framework That Changes Everything: Internal Authority and External Authority

This is the foundation of everything I’m building moving forward, because it’s the piece that most business advice skips over.

There are two types of authority in your business:

External authority is the authority you express publicly. It’s your content, messaging, positioning, how you show up in a sales conversation, how you show up on a webinar, in a podcast, in a blog, on Instagram, on Substack—anything where you’re communicating outward.

Internal authority is the authority you operate from privately. It’s:

• How you make decisions
• How you built your offer
• Who you’re speaking to
• What you care about and what you value
• What you are available for and not available for
• Whether your standards are actually yours, or borrowed from somebody else’s model

Ultimately, it’s whether you trust yourself to lead from your own decision-making skills, instead of second-guessing, outsourcing your confidence, and constantly looking for someone else to tell you what to do.

Most business advice is entirely focused on external authority.

And to be fair, external strategy matters. You can’t just “manifest” yourself into making money by lying on your couch and being super aligned.

But if the internal foundation is not solid—if your offer isn’t built with genuine conviction, if your positioning hasn’t kept pace with your expertise, if you’re running someone else’s model because that’s what you were taught—no amount of external optimization is going to work, at least not in the way you want it to.

You cannot articulate positioning you have not committed to internally.

You can’t confidently sell an offer you don’t align with anymore.

And there’s no amount of discipline that can outwork that gap. I’m a “go hard or go home” person when I’m focused on a goal, and I have learned the hard way that I cannot out-discipline, outwork, or out-energy myself through misalignment.

The external work is downstream of the internal foundation.

If the internal isn’t right, the external will always feel heavier than it needs to.

Why “Do What I Did” Mentorship Is Failing You (And What To Do Instead)

I’m going to say something bluntly, because it’s at the root of why so many smart, capable business owners are stuck right now:

A lot of business coaches teach you to imitate them.

You get into a program and it’s essentially, “Here’s what we’re doing. Go do what we’re doing.”

And yes, “success leaves clues,” but this model trains you to believe the only way to succeed is by copying other people.

It’s lazy teaching, and it’s not what most of you actually need—especially not now.

Because the point isn’t for you to build someone else’s business. 

The point is for you to build a business that fits you, that reflects your values, your strengths, your lifestyle, your season of life, your convictions, your standards, and the depth you’ve earned.

If you’ve ever been in the experience of “I did what I was told to do and it either didn’t work or I hated it or both,” you’re not alone. I’ve been there too.

The way out is not more imitation.

The way out is developing your internal authority so you can make decisions from your own leadership, and then building external strategy that actually matches who you are now.

So, What Do You Do When the Strategy That Built Your Business Won’t Keep Growing It?

If your business used to feel easier and now feels heavier—if you feel like you’re smarter than your results are showing, like you have more to offer than your current model is allowing, like you have not peaked—then I want you to stop defaulting to “more tactics.”

Start by auditing the internal foundation.

Look at your offers and ask: does this reflect my current conviction, my current expertise, and my current season? Or am I selling something because it makes money even though I feel disconnected from it?

Look at your messaging and ask: am I speaking to the person I’m actually excited to serve right now, or am I still talking to an older version of my audience because it’s what my business was built on?

Look at your decisions and ask: am I operating from my own authority, or am I borrowing my standards, my strategy, and my model from someone else and then wondering why I feel friction every day?

Then, once the internal foundation is aligned, you can rebuild the external strategy in a way that makes sense for the market we’re actually in now: a precision market, not a volume market.

That means going narrower and deeper, getting more specific about who you serve, being more precise about the problem you solve and the outcome you create, and communicating with enough depth that the right people recognize themselves immediately.

And if you do that, here’s what I’ve seen happen again and again: showing up stops feeling like dragging a boulder uphill, because you’re not trying to force your current self into an old container.

You’re building a new wineskin for new wine.

A Few Next Steps You Can Take Right Now

I’m intentionally not turning this into a giant bullet list because I want you thinking, not just “checking boxes,” but I’ll leave you with a simple set of questions to sit with this week.

If you journal on these, talk them out with a mentor, or even just think about them on a walk, you’re going to get clarity fast:

• Where am I trying to optimize the external because I don’t want to face an internal mismatch?
• What parts of my business feel heavy because I’ve outgrown them, not because I’m failing?
• If I rebuilt my offer for the version of me I am right now, what would change?
• If I spoke to the exact person I most want to serve now, what would I stop saying, and what would I finally say out loud?
• Where have I been “doing what I was told” instead of building from my own authority?

You don’t need to burn your business down to the ground.

But you probably do need to stop forcing an old strategy to carry you into a new season.

Because the strategy that built your business won’t keep growing it—and that’s not bad news.

That’s the invitation to evolve.

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If you want help identifying where your natural strengths end and your blind spots begin so you can build a business that’s aligned with who you already are, take the CEO Type Quiz at:

lauraschoenfeld.com/quiz

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