This article is an excerpt from a past monthly letter. If you enjoy this kind of grounding support, sign up to receive the monthly coaching package: it includes an article like this one, journaling prompts, creative practices, spiritual rituals and supportive tools to help you navigate your rebellious path as an artist or creative entrepreneur.

A lot of people that launch their first business often start off with the wrong expectations. They want to launch with a perfect audience, flawless offer and bulls-eye message and attain success in the blink of an eye no less. On top of it, they also expect from themselves to already know it all, when in fact, the only way to get answers, is through trial and error.

This blog post is about helping you understand how to refresh or maybe even reset parts of your business if you feel you’ve lost sight and alignment.

Iterations of your business, big or small, are inevitable in entrepreneurship and you need to expect them rather than to avoid them. If you felt it made no sense to be pressured and locked into a career path when you were 16, then you shouldn’t expect this level of certainty out of your new business either. The notion that entrepreneurship relies on patience and iterations isn’t glamorous and that image doesn’t sell - so it’s not what’s being portrayed to the masses.

New successful entrepreneurs that showcase themselves traveling, with effortless sales funnel and cash flowing fairly easily don’t always talk about where the important works needs to be done. So we start our entrepreneurial journey with the wrong expectations and the wrong mindset. We put in tons of hustle in hours, but in the wrong area. We focus on marketing, funnels and tactics rather than from the base: within. In the end, it doesn’t matter how hard you end up hustling or how many hours you put, if you don’t do the work before the work, odds are, you’ll be back where you started: being an employee in a business you feel imprisoned by.

Simply said, we skip steps. We want the end result, so we focus on how to get there, and fast. We fail to take the necessary time to properly set up any business. Before the internet made everything and anything possible in the snap of a finger, starting any business wasn’t as accessible as it is today. However, its accessibility doesn’t change that there are some fundamentals you simply shouldn’t skip.

The main one being: aligning your business with what you want. Is this what you want to do ? I’m assuming part of why you want to be your own boss is because your previous situation wasn’t working for you, right?

Don’t risk recreating the same meaningless and draining environment that made you want to want to be your own boss to begin with. Over time, you’ll run your business with less drive, less excitement. Running a business that is not fully in alignment with who we are, what we value, and what our purpose is, is not sustainable.

Understanding the kind of business we want and the type of entrepreneur we are takes time and that conflicts with today’s standard where results are expected instantly. Many will tell you to focus on action and not “overthink”, but I’ll argue that taking the appropriate time to think and plan is action in itself.

In that sense, focusing on creating a purposeful business first, is actually the fastest way to reach success, because you’ll minimize the risk of having to start it all over.

That being said, getting side tracked along the way is absolutely normal, as building a business is iterative. Needing to reroute is part of the journey and although it feels like it’s a lengthy detour, in the grand scheme of things, it won’t be. Here are my best tips to refresh and reset your business to find more alignment.

5 steps to reset and realign your business

Pause, slow down and take a step back

Oftentimes, the instinctive response when we start feeling drained, lost and stuck in business is to compensate. Because we feel we’ve done something wrong, we feel we need to make due for lost time and progress. So we look for more. More strategies, more tips, more planning. This leads to feeling more drained, more lost and most stuck.

In reality, it’s a sign to pause, slow down and get some clear headed and non biased perspective.

The next time this frantic energy arises, I’d invite you to refrain from giving into your initial instinct of trying to find the next action to compensate and instead, reprogram to asking yourself the right questions.

Similarly to how you cannot make out any details by looking outside a window from a high speed train, when it does eventually slow down, you can suddenly notice what you couldn’t before...

It’s entirely possible that this feeling of confusion and frustration comes from having gone off track: not living or working with alignment. Staying in this confusing frame of mind cannot lead to any clarity. You’re essentially zigzagging on a dirt road: you’re frantically going nowhere with a cloud of dust blinding you.

You need to pause and stop the car.

Here are some questions to help you find the time to pause and reflect properly:

Looking at your schedule, can you block a few days this month to take that step back?
How can you reorganize next week’s schedule to add buffer time?
How can you create more space this month, both personally and professionally?

Block off your calendar and respect your own boundaries. Life won’t slow down for you, you will need to do that for yourself. If a bit of work piles up while you take a bit of time for yourself, don’t panic, you’ll clear it, but you need to take this pause.

2. Cut the external noise and look internally

Taking the time to step back to get perspective, find alignment and gain clarity also means taking a step back from the external noise. More importantly it means looking internally and alot of us will feel uncomfortable looking in the mirror and reflect on important questions. The reality is that it's the most efficient way to find the real and right answers, as difficult as it may be.

I, as a person, coach or even a neutral observer, cannot tell you what’s right for you. Neither can a marketing expert you follow on Instagram or that insightful YouTube host.

Only you know what’s right for you. As cliche as it may sound, it’s the truth. But it will always seem like you can’t hear the answers if you’re constantly surrounded by external noise.

Here are some suggestions to help you cut the noise:

A 48h social media detox
A no wifi day in nature
A full day off to do something you absolutely love, for the sake of doing it

Now, something I’ve noticed with my clients (and myself as well) is the trap of putting pressure to find all the answers and doing all the inner work during that timeout. You are allowed to do absolutely nothing - it’s a pause. This is a sacred space you’re creating to disrupt the pattern you were in. So, please feel free to do nothing.

If you need a permission slip, this is it.

3. Listen to what comes up and trust your intuition

Believe it or not, fully committing to the process of slowing down and cutting the external noise will create an almost magical experience. It will literally create a non judgmental space for you to listen to your own intuition and get the answers you need. In other words, by not trying, you’ll get there. That comes with trust.

Trust the process.

Trust that creating that space for you is what you need.

Trust that you’ll get some of the answers you need to take that next step – in the right direction.

Here are somethings to be mindful about and ask yourself:

What are some things you’re starting to notice?
What are some emotions that are coming to the surface?
What are some ideas, questions, concerns, and realizations that arise?
What keeps coming back in your mind for some reason?

No one expects from you to get all the answers. You’re simply looking for clues that will slowly but surely redirect you to your truth and on your path.

If you realize that you’re nowhere near where you want to be, don’t panic. Observing the gap between our current situation and our desired situation can create a lot of anxiety, and in order to properly realign your business, you cannot operate from that state. Remember to trust the process as not all the answers will appear out of nowhere and overnight.

4. Audit your current business and life

The clues that you’ve uncovered during this process will hopefully shed a light on the parts of your business (and life) that don’t feel quite right.

Again, it’s normal to get sidetracked, the important part is to see where we got side tracked so we can double back from there and go on a new path. That means questioning what hasn’t worked so far.

Here are a few questions to get you started. Based on what you’ve been reflecting on, how do you feel about:

The clients you’re serving
The services you’re offering
The message you’re sharing
The way you operate your business on a daily basis
Where you spend your time and energy

5. Integrate the required adjustments

Once you have a better idea as to what the gap is, you need to find solutions. Remember that you can’t do it all at once. You may still need to run your business as it is now temporarily as you transition into your next iteration. That may require some sort of balancing act for a while. So take the time to figure out what you want to change and prioritize. Do it in phases if need be. Again, the goal isn’t to go all out and burn out, the goal is to get realigned, so take the time to create a more accurate iteration.

Here are a few questions to guide your transition process

What needs to change?
What do you need to stop doing?
What do you need to start doing?
What feels good to you, and what feels out of alignment?
What is the very next step to realign each area of your business?

As daunting as all of this sounds, you should be very proud to have the humility to realize that any business doesn’t succeed on the first try. It takes time, patience and introspection.

A good way to think of this reset is imagining you were a runner, you may have essentially gotten out on the track without tying your shoes and you stumbled. You’re now taking the time to make sure your shoes are properly tied and you’re on the right track before starting your marathon.

Most successful entrepreneurs have had many failed businesses before “getting it right”. Those are also iterations. Obviously aiming to fail isn’t the goal here, but acknowledging that it may take a few rounds before this business reaches maturity is part of the process.