You’re not missing effort. You’re not missing knowledge. You’re dealing with a disconnect.
When your personal growth, client journey, and business stage are out of sync, everything feels harder than it should. Messaging doesn’t land. Offers feel off. Sales stay inconsistent.
This is not a strategy problem. It’s an alignment problem.
This episode breaks down what’s actually happening beneath the surface and why adding more only makes it worse.
What You’ll Learn:
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Why your business feels off even when you’re doing everything right
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How disconnected strategies create inconsistent results
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The three core elements that must work together
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Chapter List
00:00 Introduction and the problem of disconnection
01:10 Why doing everything right still doesn’t work
03:20 The hidden issue: building a business in disconnected pieces
06:00 What disconnection actually looks like in your business
09:00 Why adding more strategies makes things worse
11:30 Signs your business is out of alignment
15:00 The turning point: connecting the pieces
17:20 The three elements that must align
20:30 Business stages and why strategy timing matters
22:00 What to do next and how to identify your disconnect
Cleaned Transcript
[Chapter: Introduction and the problem of disconnection]
Lori 00:02:52
Welcome back to the Midlife Business Academy. I’m Lori Lyons, business coach, marketing strategy and accidental techie.
And today we’re going to talk about something a lot of people don’t say out loud.
What happens when you’ve done everything right and it still doesn’t seem to be working? Not because you didn’t try hard enough, not because you picked the wrong niche or need a better Instagram strategy, because there’s a piece of the puzzle that almost nobody talks about.
And once you see it, you’re going to understand why so much of what you’ve done.
And once you see it, you’re going to understand why so much of what you’ve done hasn’t stuck the way it should have.
This is the first of the two-part series, and I want to walk you through something I’ve been building and working on several of these different episodes and refining this for years. And now I’m putting it all together.
It’s a different way of looking at your business that connects three things most people are treating as completely separate. Your personal transformation, the transformation that you provide your clients through your client journey, and the stage your business is actually in right now.
What if those three things are out of sync? Everything feels like a grind. Everything feels off.
But what if they lined up? That’s when your business starts working with you instead of against you.
So I want to start with the experience of, let’s call it what it is, because you’re in it right now. And I don’t want you to feel like you’re alone in it.
You’ve invested, you’ve invested real time, real money, real energy into getting better at your business. You’ve taken the courses, you’ve worked with coaches, you’ve read all the books, you’ve done the inner work, and maybe you’ve completely reinvented how you think about yourself and your business over the last few years.
I know I have.
And yet your marketing still feels like an effort. Sales are still inconsistent. You’re tweaking your message, adjusting your offers. You’re second guessing yourself and your content. And there’s this low grade feeling that something is just off. You can’t quite name it, but it’s there.
And here’s what I want to say to you. You didn’t do it wrong, but you may have done a lot of the things that weren’t connected to each other.
I’ve lived this. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it with hundreds of coaching and website design clients that there was something off.
And I, like you, have spent thousands of jobs.
And like you, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on programs that were really good. The information was solid. The coach knew their stuff. But when I tried to apply it to my business, it still didn’t fit.
It was like being handed this beautiful piece of furniture that didn’t match the fit, the room that it was going in. it’s quality. You just can’t figure out where to put it.
And I have a friend, someone that I watched work with a coach for two years. She’s now one of my clients. And her biggest problem was after two years of coaching, two years of homework, two years of strategy sessions, at the end of it, the coach still didn’t know what she did. She still didn’t get it.
So let’s let that land for a second. Thousands of dollars and a coach that you put your trust in, and she still didn’t know what you did after two years.
It’s not a laziness problem. That’s a didn’t implement problem. That’s a you didn’t do the modules and PDFs problem. It’s a mismatch. And underneath that mismatch is something I see all the time in the space, disconnection.
[Chapter: Why doing everything right still doesn’t work]
Lori 00:07:00
So what is disconnected really mean? Because I use that word a lot. So here’s what I mean by it.
Most entrepreneurs, especially in the coaching and service space, are building their business in pieces. And I get it because that’s how we were taught. You take a messaging course here, a sales program there, a mindset retreat somebody somewhere else and with somebody else. You work with one coach on your offer, another of your on your marketing,
And maybe, you know, even a therapist on your personal mindset stuff. How many coaches do you need?
None of it’s bad, but none of it is talking to each other.
And I’ve seen so many of my of my clients now be so confused because one coach was telling them one thing, one coach was telling them another thing, and a third coach might have been telling them something totally different.
So what ends up happening is you have a version of yourself and your business that’s probably grown and shifted. Your thinking is different. Your values are clear. You see your clients and problems in a much deeper way than you did two or three years ago.
But your business hasn’t caught up.
Your message is still saying what you’ve said before the shift.
Your message is still saying what you said before the shift.
Your offers are still structured around an older version of who you thought about.
Your message is still saying what you said before the shift. Your offers are still structured around an older version of what you thought about transformation, if you thought about it at all.
Your marketing is still aimed at the problem your clients say they have instead of the one you know they actually have.
And that gap between who you’ve become and how your business is showing up in the world, that’s the disconnection I’m talking about. It’s not a strategy problem, it’s an alignment problem.
[Chapter: What disconnection actually looks like in your business]
Lori 00:09:00
So here’s a way to think about it. Imagine you’ve been on a really significant personal journey over the last few years. You’ve done the work, you think differently, you show up differently, you see the world differently.
Now imagine you’re still showing up to every networking event and sales conversation as the person you were three years ago, using the same energy, the same framing, the same words.
People will feel the mismatch, even if they couldn’t name it. And that’s what’s happening in your business.
So here’s where I want to challenge something, because I think it’s keeping a lot of people stuck.
When things aren’t working, the default move is to add something. add more content, add a new funnel, a different offer. Oh my gosh, I have to create a new program. I have to rebrand my business in the coaching industry.
And I say, this is someone who’s very much a part of it and have been for years. We’re really good at feeding that impulse. There’s always a new framework, a new system, a new certification that promises to be the thing that finally makes it click.
I’ve been guilty of this myself. I know that if something’s not working, instead of sitting back and looking at the inner work, looking at what’s really going on, let me create a new lead magnet. Let me create a new automation. Oh, you know, I need another one.
I’m not anti-framework. You know that because I love frameworks. You will figure that out about me really quickly if you don’t already know that.
Here’s the difference. A framework should help you see something clearly. not give you something else to layer on top of a foundation that isn’t solid yet.
If you build a house on a poor foundation, it’s going to crumble and it’s going to have cracks in it. And when your business is disconnected, more is not the answer. Connection is the answer.
[Chapter: Why adding more strategies makes things worse]
Lori 00:11:06
Because you can’t have the best funnel in the world if your message is not speaking to where your ideal client actually is in their journal.
Because you can’t have the best funnel in the world.
Because you can have the best funnel in the world, but if your message isn’t speaking to where your ideal client actually is in their journey, that funnel is moving the wrong people forward, or it’s not moving anyone forward at all.
You can have a beautifully designed offer, but if it’s not positioned to meet your client at the right moment of readiness, it’s going to feel like a hard sell, even when it shouldn’t feel like that. That’s where we get sales are yucky, because we’re trying to sell the wrong person at the wrong stage of their business.
So the problem isn’t the funnel. The problem isn’t the offer. The problem is that they’re not connected to anything, not to your transformation, not to your client’s journey, or not to the actual business.
The problem is they’re not connected to anything. They’re not connected to the transformation. They’re not connected to their client’s journey, and they’re not connected to the actual stage their business in.
[Chapter: Signs your business is out of alignment]
Lori 00:12:16
So let’s make this really concrete because I want you to be able to look at your own business and recognize it.
A disconnected business doesn’t always feel like a failing business. Sometimes it looks like a pretty decent business that just never quite skipped momentum. You’re not broke, you’re not in crisis, but you’re working harder than the results justify. And there’s a ceiling that you just can’t seem to get past.
So here’s what it tends to look like in practice.
You talk about transformation. You use that word, you believe in it, and you really believe that you have a transformational business. But when someone asks you what you do, you find yourself stumbling through an answer that kind of makes sense, but it didn’t quite land. Been there, done that. You can feel it.
Or you over explain because you’re trying to close the gap with words. You’re trying to make up something that is going to relate to them that they might understand what you actually do.
And you’re great at connecting with people one-on-one. But turning those connections into consistent sales, it feels yucky and it feels like a different skill set that you haven’t figured out yet.
You know you’re good at what you do, but selling it feels weirdly separate from doing it. And I hear this all the time. I just don’t feel comfortable selling.
Well, you know what? If you’re giving the right message to the right people, you’re not selling. You’re offering a service that can really help them. And that’s the difference. And that’s the disconnect.
Clients love working with you. They genuinely do. You get great feedback, you get great results. You get real transformations, but you’re not getting a steady steam of referrals and you’re not sure why. because your work lands, but somehow they’re just not spreading the word. They stop working with you and they forget about you. Again, been there, done that.
Your content feels like a hamster wheel. You’re producing it, you’re putting it out there, and some pieces do well, but there’s no through line. It’s not building toward anything. Each post or episode or video feels like its own thing. instead of part of the journey that you’re taking people on. That’s the through line, the journey.
And maybe the most telling sign is you’re constantly in revision mode. You’re always tweaking your messaging, your offers, your positioning, and there’s always something that feels like it needs fixing.
I remember not too long ago, I had a client and we were tweaking her message because she’s going through this and trying to identify her clients and where they are in their journey. And she immediately said, I got to create a whole new lead magnet. No, you don’t have to create a whole new lead magnet.
We just need to tweak the one that you have so that it fits the transformation you provide. There was good information in there. It was just the messaging is slightly off. So all we did was go through this checklist of things and adjust the language. We didn’t start from scratch. We didn’t create a whole new one. In fact, a lot of what she did was very valid and very good. It was just off in a few places. Her e-mail follow-up was off in a few places. And once we fixed that, it worked perfectly.
So just because something actually is off, and you know it, and you just can’t figure out exactly what it is, sometimes that disconnection is in the journey and where your clients are in the journey.
And the reason all those tweaks never quite fix it is because you’re adjusting the surface, not what’s underneath.
[Chapter: The turning point: connecting the pieces]
Lori 00:16:18
So what bridge is that? This is what took me a long time to see clearly. And when I did, it reframed everything about how I started thinking about building a business.
I had all the different pieces. I just had to put them all together in a way that makes sense. And it was kind of like that light bulb going off. It’s like, oh, look, all of this works together.
I had a client journey. I worked with my clients on it. I talked about being in transformational business. I helped my clients with that. We talked about where they were in their stages of business and what aligned with the stages that they were in, not something that they were two stages behind.
And I started looking at it and thinking, all of this goes together. It’s like one big wheel circle that, you know, the spokes that make the wheel go.
Once I figured out that they all work together, it was like, this is brilliant. How many people is this going to help? How many people can I serve by teaching this system?
So that’s where I’m introducing this today and where the next episode is really going to hone that in and put it all together.
[Chapter: The three elements that must align]
Lori 00:17:28
So my call to action for you is if you haven’t gone back and listened to some of my previous episodes, then I want you to do that.
Because why is this important? Because you’ve been on a journey. You have real meaningful growth. The way you see your clients and you understand their problems, the depth at which you guide them, all of that’s evolved. And that evolution is your biggest asset.
But if it’s not showing up in your marketing and in your business and your messaging and your offers and your client experience, if it’s living inside you, but not in your business, then it’s not doing any work.
Your clients aren’t just buying a service. They’re moving through a process of change and transformation. And whether you’re conscious of it or not, you’re guiding that process from the very first piece of content they find all the way through to what happens after they finish working with you.
And no matter what your business is, it follows the stages. We all have that in common.
So the question is whether you’re guiding it intentionally or accidentally. Because when it’s intentional, when you understand exactly what your client needs to see, believe, release, and step into each stage of your business, it starts to feel like it has a pulse. Not because you’re doing more, because it’s all connected.
So this is the framework and I’m going to walk you through both in this episode and the next one. The three things that have to be in alignment for your business to work.
The first is your personal transformation. The journey you’ve been on, who you’ve become is the RISE framework, the Reveal, Release, Redefine, and RISE, and how that informs the way you guide your clients. If you haven’t listened to my RISE episode 209, that’s your call to action.
The second is your client journey, how they move through their business, how they find you, how they engage, how they decide if they’re going to work with you or not, and how they experience what you deliver and what happens after.
And the third is the business stage.
[Chapter: Business stages and why strategy timing matters]
Lori 00:20:02
And this is the one people almost never think about. Because the strategies that work in one stage of building a business are completely different from the ones that work in another.
And if you’re applying the wrong strategies to the stage you’re in, it’s not going to feel right no matter what good the strategy is.
These are the work it out, figure it out, work it out, rock it out, and boss it out stages. If you’re in the figure it out stages and you’re trying to do boss it out activities, no wonder you’re overwhelmed. No wonder this is hard. You’re trying to do something that your business is not ready for and probably you aren’t ready for yet.
But when you put all these three things together, when you put the rise transformation formula, when you put the client journey stages along with the stages of your business, everything gets cleaner. Your messaging makes sense, your offers feel right, your clients move forward more naturally, and you stop feeling like you’re constantly one strategy away from something clicking.
When they’re not working together, when you’re in one stage of business, but marketing like you’re in a different one, or when your personal transformation has outpaced what your business is saying, that’s when you get that persistent something’s off feeling that no amount of content planning or funnel tweaking is going to fix.
[Chapter: What to do next and how to identify your disconnect]
Lori 00:21:41
So in the next episode, we’re going to fully build this out. I’ve told you why. I’ve told you what’s happening underneath all of this. So in the next episode, we’re going to talk about how all of this works together.
So here’s what I want you to leave this episode with. The real reason your business has felt disconnected isn’t because you did it wrong. It’s because you’ve been handed pieces, good pieces, useful pieces, but nothing where they all put together. Nobody showed you how they fit, and that’s what we’re going to do.
So again, your action step for this episode is to go back and listen to the previous episodes if you haven’t already. I talk about the client journey and I break it down in episodes 309 through 319. And those two hot seat coaching episodes are in there if you want to listen to how I work with clients.
Episode 312 specifically breaks down the four stages of business, the figure it out, work it out, rock it out, boss it out stages. And most recently, episode 325 talks about the RISE transformational formula, and it walks you through the four steps of creating a transformational message and business.
So like I said, if you already listened, go back and listen again. Yes, that’s a shameless plug for going and listen to other episodes.
So before you go, here’s the question I want to leave you with. Where does your business feel the most disconnected right now?
Is it at the front end where people aren’t finding you? Or are they finding you and not sticking around?
Is it in the middle? Are people engaging? They seem interested, but they’re not converting to clients?
Is it in the delivery? Clients are working with you, but something in the experience isn’t quite landing the way you want it to?
Or is it the back end? The work is good, but it’s not generating referrals and repeat clients?
So get very specific, because in the next episode, we’re going to give that feeling a name. And more importantly, we’re going to give it a solution.
So if you’re already thinking, yeah, there’s something definitely off, I just can’t figure out what it is, that’s exactly the conversation we’ll have together on a Profitable Path Blueprint call. We map out where your business is right now, where it’s breaking down, and what to focus on first, so you’re not guessing and hoping something sticks.
The link is in the show notes. Go grab a spot.
I’ll see you on the next time. I’ll see you next week. And remember, it’s never too late to build the business of your dreams. Have a good week.