When You’re Tired, Done & Ready for Your next Business level: How to Scale without Burnout

Your business can be successful and still feel off. We’re exploring how to know when you’ve outgrown your business and how to scale a business without burnout for your next level.

Feel like your business still works, but you’re just not feeling it anymore?

Sometimes, it’s not about quitting or failing, it’s just that you’ve outgrown your current path. After pouring so much energy into your business, it’s hard to accept that it doesn’t align with your life or vibe anymore.

I’ve been there…questioning what to do next, feeling so much fear about leaving something behind that I nurtured into existence. That constant back and forth is exhausting!

That’s why this solo episode is all about taking you to your next level of business, whether that’s a new niche, new audience or just a new work-life balance.

Get ready to Refine. Realign and Rebuild…but we’re going to make it a lot less scary for you in this conversation!

Because I truly wish that I had trusted myself to shift things sooner.

This episode is for you if you’re craving a more sustainable way to grow, wondering how to scale a business without burnout, or feeling the pull to pivot your niche, your offers, or your entire way of doing business.

Because scaling isn’t always about getting bigger. Sometimes it’s about getting truer, calmer, smarter, and far less glued to your phone.

TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 — Signs you’ve outgrown your business
• 02:18 — Burnout or not aligned?
• 04:17 — Refine, realign & rebuild 
• 07:02 — How to scale without burnout
• 12:18 — Permission to pivot w/o guilt

Listen for…

inspiration to go find what gives you that spark or that freedom again!

Next Steps:
Come learn how to grow differently.
Join us here:
The  Log Off & Still Grow Mastermind 

FULL TRANSCRIPT WITH CHARDÉT RYEL

Chardet Ryel (00:00)
Have you ever had the feeling that your business is working mostly, but something about it, it just doesn’t feel right anymore. It’s not that anything is desperately broken. It’s not because it’s failing. You’ve changed or maybe the way you wanna do things has changed, your life has changed. It could be that.

You’re making money. I mean, maybe it’s not as dependable as you would like. It comes in spikes. It requires you being on all the time, but it’s working. You have a good community or you’re building it, but something feels really, really off. This is about when to know that you’ve outgrown your business, that you are allowed to move on. And it doesn’t matter if you feel this way after 16 years or six months.

This is not quitting. This is thinking about things a little different, more of a pivot, let’s say. Welcome to her first three years from breakdowns to blunders, learn what worked and what didn’t. I’m your host, Shardé, and whether you’re a new entrepreneur or you’re just starting something new, this is your space to learn and feel a little less alone. I’ll see you inside.

So when I think about this, for me it was definitely being in the fitness world. I started in 2013, first ever version of my business, bootcamp, Central Park, New York, and then it evolved from there. But it was always still around fitness and wellness. And about five years in, I was kind of exhausted with it. I didn’t really wanna keep doing it. I was really tired of the toxic fitness.

online space, you know, some of the wild stuff that people say and how they make especially women feel about their bodies. just, didn’t feel good for me. And I found it to be really challenging to walk away from because at this point it was like, I’ve put five years in, I’ve taken this business from New York to London. Like I had to start over again. I’ve put in

so many hours in the marketing, et cetera, people now will say, hey, if you want to do fitness, Sade does this. And it felt like I was not able to stop. And the hard part about this, and you might notice this too, maybe, is that when you get to a point where you don’t really want to still be doing your business the way you’re doing it, and maybe it’s not even the industry, you know, maybe you’re in coaching and you still love coaching, but you just want to do it differently, it becomes really, really hard.

because it’s kind of like being in that job that you don’t hate. So you’re not gonna quit, but you don’t love it either. It’s so much easier when you really don’t like it and you’re forced to walk away. It’s much harder when you’re in that middle ground. And I found that it was also really hard to say, if I change this, I start from zero. I lose a lot of the credibility that I had before. That’s hard.

But I think it’s the point where I just remember having this feeling like I want something more. It’s no longer about success. I just want more of my own lifestyle. I want more depth. I want something that’s different. So for you, you might feel like you’ve outgrown your business either in what you’re doing. It’s no longer the area you want to practice. Maybe you’re doing therapy and you’re like, no more. Maybe you’re doing marketing and it’s just no longer what you want to do. Or maybe it’s lifestyle.

Maybe you want to travel more, be with family more, maybe you want to just have some days for you and the way that you’ve built your business is not allowing you to do that. I don’t know if you have felt this, like are any of these hitting, right? Are you feeling any of this? And again, it doesn’t need to be that you’ve been in business for a really long time. This can happen after just a couple months. It’s more difficult when it happens early because you got to assess, you know, is this because I’m

just exhausted from pushing? Or is it genuinely that I need to do something a little bit different? So let’s say that this is more, you know you need to do something different. It is running, it is working. You wanna know what your next stage is. So this is the kind of middle stage. There’s a point where you outgrow something that’s already working. When we first do our business,

It’s just about making it run. It’s a business baby. It’s a toddler. You just need to make it work. You try things. You experiment. You prove that you can make money. And it often takes a couple years, right, to be able to do this. The second phase is you make business fit your life. So this is now refine, realign, and build the business around your life, not the other way around.

because you’ve already learned what it takes to make money. You’ve already learned what your skill set is, what you need. And now it’s time for you to exit the learner phase to do something a little bit different. And I think so many of us, get stuck in that first phase for a really long time. This is someone who is doing the same thing for many years, the same way. Maybe it’s time heavy. Maybe it’s only you.

maybe it’s just the same exact services products and you’re just done. You’re done. And that was me after five years, but I actually stayed in it for 10. So I want to give you another way business growth, especially on this show you’ve probably seen, it’s not always about getting bigger. So for you, would ask you, know, where in your business does something feel like you’re done? You’re ready to graduate it.

even if it’s still working. What part of your work feels like you’ve outgrown it? Maybe you haven’t really wanted to admit that. Many times in business, just like in jobs, or really a lot of things in life, we’re not staying with it because it’s right. We stay with it because it’s working well enough. It’s okay for you to want more than that.

It’s okay, especially for you to want something that maybe works for you when you’re not always having to be there, always have to be on. I think that was a big thing for me. You know, I know that the fitness stuff I had outgrown, but what I really outgrew was this business model of always having to be on socials, pushing that way, going after clients one-on-one, these, these types of things I outgrew that way. And perhaps if I had approached it,

the way that I now do business, could have probably stayed longer. So it’s not always about changing everything. Sometimes it really is just the mode that you’re in. And if you are this person, if you’re like, okay, the business is good. Maybe I want to shift some things, but what I really want to change, what I’ve really outgrown is this manual way of doing stuff, of always having to be the one to promote, to do, et cetera. There’s actually something extremely helpful for you.

the log off workshop. I’m basically running this with a top email marketer and friend. Together we’re going to share how you can log off, especially for the summer, and not have your business disappear. How you can really pursue a different business model that doesn’t always require you being there 24-7 online. Go enjoy some stuff.

Have a picnic, go relax, go pause. I don’t know anything that you want to do. So that’s something that sounds like you would want to know more of how to create that kind of business model. It’s called the Log Off Workshop. You’ll be able to see a lot about it on my socials if you’re listening to this at the time of being published. If you go to the Her First Three Years website, you’ll also see it there. And it’s just a way that you can do things a bit differently.

Now, if you’re here thinking, okay, I’ve got this urge, I’m ready to pivot something, I’m ready to change, it doesn’t always have to be a huge change. It can also be in your lifestyle. I think this is the next phase of business is asking yourself, how do I wanna live? What do I want my days to feel like? Do you want slow mornings? Do you want flexible hours? Do you want…

weekends, you know, what do you what do you want? How much time do you genuinely want to be online? When I finally made this choice that I that I outgrew my business, it was actually the decision to leave the fitness world or start that transition in 2021. And that was at the height of online fitness. So it wasn’t the case that things weren’t working. They were working better than they had ever worked before. But I knew that that kind of

business model offered me no freedom. So from 2021, I started slowly putting in these shifts. And then in 2024 was when I officially said, okay, it’s time, done, this chapter of fitness is over. I’m fully moving into more of the podcasting side because I had been doing that anyways, right? I’ve been doing all of this stuff at once. And I’m not going to say that that was easy at all.

Some of you who listen to the other podcasts feel good naked. You know that I lost my voice for three months. I decided to do this pivot in think November, December, 2023, and then January. My voice is gone. My voice that I use for everything, coaching, podcasting, it’s gone. And it was almost like a sign of, your nervous system is freaked out. You’re leaving behind this business of what, 10 years? And it must be terrifying.

So I know it’s not easy. I know it’s really hard. I think even for those of you that are in the block of my business is fine, but I just don’t want to have to be always on. It’s even terrifying for you to think about not being on socials all the time, stepping away, building something that works for you. And that’s just the next step, right? It’s okay for you to do that. For some of you, you might have been in your business for only a year and you’re ready for that. And that’s also okay. Because when I look,

back, I don’t regret leaving at all. If anything, I wish that I had trusted myself to shift things sooner. Because the way that I work now, it doesn’t require me to show up every day. I mean, imagine if your business was one that really supported a life you want. And I’m not talking about financially. Of course, that’s what we want as well. It’s great to have that. I’m talking about like just the

the freedoms you want, the basic stuff that you want to do. It’s giving yourself permission to really look at what you’ve created. Gratitude for having it, right? Pat on the back for doing it. Most people don’t become entrepreneurs. It’s freaking hard. So amazing for what you’ve done. It’s okay though to look at what you made, even if it’s working, and say, want something different. I want to try something else.

And I know that’s a hard shift because we really fall back to what we know. So you might be in the position of, okay, I don’t want to do, I don’t want to be a therapist anymore. And I’m going to start moving into, let’s say nutrition coaching. And then as soon as you start doing the nutrition coaching, you have a perfect client from therapy that wants you to come back. Like these things are going to test you. Same goes with the way you do your business. If you decide, okay, I don’t want to be needing to post all the time.

constantly chasing people, running launches. I’m ready for something different and then you have someone come to you and say, hey, I want all of your time as a one-to-one client and you’ve got to make that choice to say, this is what I want instead. So unlike a lot of episodes on this podcast, there is not one firm, actionable step here for you to do. This is a reflection one. It’s the space to really look at

Do I want to continue with either the kind of business I have, your niche, your industry, or with the way I’m doing it? Or maybe you want to change both. It’s the space to do that and permission, although you don’t even need it from me, you you need it from yourself to say, okay, let’s do the next thing and having the courage to do that. And if it is the thing of you are ready to do something where your business model is a little bit less

dependent on you, that it can grow without you a little bit, then I would really encourage you to join the Log Off workshop because we will show you how to do it. It’s a free workshop. It is for people whose businesses are running and working, but you feel like you’re in it all the time. If you’re someone who’s still really new, this is not yet it for you, but this is still something to think about, the business model that you want. And in all of it, really, no matter what you are grappling with here,

outgrowing your business, doesn’t mean that you have failed. I remember crying. I talked about that. was crying. I’m always crying on a bus. I was crying on a bus in London because I remember one version of my business, I was ready to shut down because it just didn’t feel aligned anymore. And I remember just bawling my eyes out because I knew it was time to close it. And it felt like

all these things that I had done, all these ways that I had suffered for the business and all the sacrifices I made and it felt like I was just giving those up. But it’s not that. It’s your reaching for something that’s more aligned. And the best thing about being an entrepreneur is that your skills, your mindset, 100 % of it, all your experience, 100 % of it goes with you to the next thing.

You know, when you get a new job, you can transfer some of those skills, but when you’re an entrepreneur, you can transfer all of them. So no time is lost ever. Evaluate what you want. Have the courage to ask those questions, even if you don’t act now. Take away the pressure to change right now. Are there ways that I can introduce maybe something new that I like, maybe a different offer, maybe a different business model? And I will see you in the next one. If you laugh.

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