Doing It in the Dark: How to Keep Going When Your Business Isn't Progressing
Welcome, angel! In this episode, you'll learn:
Why motivation is the wrong thing to chase when you're in a slow season of business
How to set short-term goals that are actually within your control so you stop feeling like a failure
The difference between busy work and needle-moving action, and how to tell which one you've been doing
Why building a life you love outside of your business is one of the most underrated strategies for entrepreneurial success
How to protect your energy when you're in a vulnerable season so you can keep showing up without burning out
I first heard the concept of "doing it in the dark" from Seth Godin, and the moment I heard it, I felt like someone had finally put language to something I had experienced so many times in my own business journey. It's the season where you are showing up, doing the work, putting in real effort every single day, and yet you have absolutely nothing external to show for it. And I want to talk about it today because I think it's one of the most misunderstood and underserved seasons in entrepreneurship, and I also think most people quit right before the payoff!
What I want to be really clear about from the start is that this episode is not about manufacturing motivation, because motivation is one of the most fickle and unreliable things you can try to build a business on. Motivation comes and goes based on how you slept, what the algorithm did to your last post, and whether Mercury is in retrograde. What you actually need is something much more durable than motivation, and that's a plan that doesn't depend on how you're feeling on any given day. So if you stay with me through this entire episode, you're going to walk away with clarity on your goals, a clear picture of what actions are actually going to create results, and the kind of focused drive that will carry you forward even when the results aren't showing up yet.
But first, I need to ask you one honest question before any of this matters.
The Question You Need to Answer Before Anything Else
I want you to really sit with this: are you willing to show up and continue doing the work to build your business, even if you don't see any results for a year or more? And before you panic, let me say this: if you're an online service provider like a VA, project manager, or OBM, you absolutely can and should see results in less than a year. But the reason I'm asking you to operate from the assumption that you won't is because it forces you to get your priorities straight. So many new online service providers are prioritizing results when what they actually need to prioritize is building. Do the work for the sake of building, and let the results be the reward that follows, not the fuel that drives you. If your answer to that question is a clear, resounding yes, then let's get into the five things that will help you keep moving forward.
1. Shift Your Goals to Be Fully Within Your Control
The first thing I want you to do is get really honest about the goals you're currently holding and ask yourself whether they're actually within your control. There are two types of goals: long-term and short-term. And the mistake I see people make over and over again is conflating the two. Your long-term vision should be big and expansive and exciting, the kind of thing that feels almost too bold to say out loud. But your short-term goals need to follow one non-negotiable rule: you have to be able to achieve them without anyone else being involved.
Here's what I mean by that: If one of your short-term goals is to reach 10k followers on Instagram in six months, that's not actually a goal, it's a wish, because you cannot directly control when people choose to follow you. And when you set goals like that and miss them, your brain creates a story that you failed, which is both inaccurate and incredibly demoralizing. Instead, shift your goal to something you fully control, like posting on Instagram three times a week for the next three months. That is entirely within your power, and every time you do it, you win.
I also recommend keeping your short-term goal list to five items or fewer, and I want to explain why because I know that might feel counterintuitive. If you have thirty short-term goals and you accomplish eight of them in six months, you're going to feel like you barely made a dent. But if you have three solid goals, accomplish all three, and then create new ones, you're going to feel an enormous sense of momentum and capability, and that feeling is what keeps you going during the dark seasons. For each goal you write down, ask yourself two questions: is this fully within my control, and is this realistically attainable for where I am in my business right now?
2. Get Clear on the Needle-Moving Action
Once you have your goals, the next step is getting honest about whether the actions you're taking every day are actually going to move the needle, because there's a big difference between being busy in your business and doing the work that creates results. I see this all the time -- endlessly tweaking the onboarding process, rewriting website copy for the hundredth time, spending three hours perfecting a single post. None of those are inherently bad things, but none of them are going to meaningfully grow your business either.
And here's what I think is actually happening underneath that busyness, because I've experienced it myself. Sometimes we have a subconscious resistance to doing the work that would actually create results, because deep down we're afraid that if we do the real work and still don't get results, we'll have proof that we're a failure. It feels safer to know you still have untried strategies, things left to implement, work left to do. But I want to name that fear and then dismantle it completely, because you will always have more things left to try. There is always another method, another angle, another idea, and the path to your goal is never one single road. It's always going to be okay to try something, learn from it, and try again.
So here's the practical piece: look at each of your short-term goals and ask yourself what tasks are actually going to bring them to fruition, and how often each of those tasks needs to happen. If your goal is to post more consistently on social media because you're using it to generate leads, then the tasks are creating content, writing captions, and scheduling posts, and you can assign a realistic frequency to each one. When you map it out that concretely, your brain stops seeing your goal as a hope and starts seeing it as a plan, and that shift alone creates so much more momentum than any motivational quote ever could.
3. Release the Timeline
This one is short but I think it might be the most liberating thing I say today: give yourself permission to release the timeline you've attached to your big goals. I know that as an entrepreneur you have a big vision, and I know that vision can sometimes feel so massive that it starts to feel impossible, like the gap between where you are and where you want to be is just too wide. So here's a reframe I love to use -- what if you gave yourself ten years to build it? When you zoom out to a decade, everything starts to feel so much more attainable, and what that realization does is remind you that your big vision is not out of reach, it's just not going to happen in the timeline your impatient, ambitious brain decided it needed to happen in. Get to work, stay unattached to the results, and trust the process to unfold at its own pace.
4. Build a Life You Love Outside of Your Business
I remember the early days of building my business when I would wake up thinking about it and fall asleep thinking about it and basically spend every waking moment consumed by it, and for a while that felt exciting and electric. But it's not sustainable, and more importantly, it actually works against you in ways that aren't immediately obvious.
At some point in my journey I realized I needed to find ways outside of my business to feel fulfilled, successful, and excited about life, so I started being really intentional about it. I focused on reading more, picked up running, got more consistent with lifting, made a point of seeing friends regularly, and found joy in smaller things like trying new recipes, exploring different parts of my city, and even teaching my dog a new trick. And here's why I think this matters so much more than people give it credit for: your business mirrors your entire life. The patterns you have in your relationships, with your money, with yourself -- they all show up in your business too. So if you want to feel successful in your business, ask yourself how you can feel successful in your personal life first, because that feeling bleeds into everything.
5. Protect Your Energy Like It's Your Most Valuable Asset
When you're in a season where you feel like nothing is working, you are in a vulnerable state, and you need to be really intentional about what you're letting in. Feelings of stagnation, frustration, and failure are genuinely toxic to your ability to keep building, so when those feelings start creeping in, I treat it like a signal that I need to make some immediate changes to what I'm consuming and how I'm spending my time.
For me, that typically means cutting out social media scrolling, being very selective about the podcasts and content I'm consuming, playing music that genuinely makes me feel good, meditating more, and getting outside every single day. And I want to say this specifically for anyone who is actively trying to make sales right now: stop consuming content about the economy. I mean it. It's unhelpful at best and genuinely detrimental to your results at worst, because historically entrepreneurs have always found ways to build and thrive regardless of economic conditions, and consuming that kind of content when you're already in a fragile mindset is just pouring gasoline on a fire that doesn't need to grow.
The Takeaway:
Even if it feels like you are getting absolutely nowhere, you are almost certainly making invisible progress that will pay off in time. So much of building a business is just grinding it out in the dark, doing the work when no one is watching and the results haven't shown up yet, and trusting that the consistency is compounding even when you can't see it. That is the experience of every single entrepreneur, and it means you are in incredible company. Stay focused, keep your head down, and you will get there!
And if you're ready for real support in your business, I would love to help you. If you haven't started yet or you're missing a clear path to getting clients and building the business of your dreams, get on the waitlist for Lucky Day, my business-building program. And if you're looking for one-on-one support, send me a DM on Instagram and I'll send you the private link to book a call!
✢ ✢ ✢
If we haven’t met yet, hi! My name is Shannon and I have been a heart-led entrepreneur in the online space for over 5 years, teaching ambitious young women how to say yes to the desires of their hearts and start the business that will change their lives.
I created The Shannon Blanchard Podcast to support you in building a life that feels lucky through entrepreneurship, intentional reality creation, and deep inner work.
If you're a big dreamer and ready to embody your fullest potential in a way that lights you up, this show is for you!
Lucky Links:
💌 Sign up for my newsletter on building your business, trusting yourself, and creating a life you love
🕊️ Explore all of my offers and resources