If your latest business decision is being driven by frustration, resentment, burnout, or fear, you might be building away from your past instead of toward the business you actually want. In this episode of The Real Truth About Business podcast, I’m talking about the difference between making decisions to escape something that isn’t working and intentionally creating what comes next. For service-based entrepreneurs, those emotions are valuable information, but they shouldn’t become your entire business strategy. After 9 years of experience, I’ve seen how easily one difficult client, an underpriced offer, or a frustrating sales process can trigger a complete change without enough thought about the desired outcome. Sustainable business growth requires more than knowing what you don’t want. You need a North Star that defines what you’re building toward. We’re talking about pricing strategy, capacity, boundaries, offers, your sales process, and how to use facts from the past without allowing your past experiences to dictate your future.

What You'll Learn:

• How to recognize when you're making business decisions from resentment, fear, or frustration
• Why knowing what you don't want isn't enough to create an effective business strategy
• How to turn past experiences into useful data instead of letting them dictate your future
• What to consider before changing your pricing strategy, offers, boundaries, or sales process
• How to define the capacity, profitability, clients, and business model you actually want
• Why your North Star should guide strategic planning as your business evolves

Episode Highlights:

[00:00] Introduction: Why mindset is one of the hardest parts of business

[01:30] Are you moving away from something or intentionally toward something?

[03:00] Using resentment, frustration, burnout, and fear as information

[04:00] Client example: When undercharging creates resentment

[06:30] Why knowing what you don't want isn't enough

[08:00] Stop letting your past self build your future business

[09:30] Turning capacity and lifestyle goals into an actual strategy

[11:00] Making sales process decisions from intention instead of frustration

[12:30] Facts over emotion when making business decisions

[14:00] Why you can't create a plan without knowing the destination

[15:30] Making intentional investments based on where you're going

[16:30] Wrap-up: Build toward your evolving North Star

Key Takeaways:

Your Past Gives You Data, Not Your Destination

There’s a big difference between making a decision because you’re trying to get away from something and making a decision because you’re intentionally moving toward something.

Maybe you're resentful because you've been undercharging, so you decide to completely change your pricing.

Maybe you're exhausted because clients have too much access to you, so you remove nearly all access from your next offer.

Maybe something didn't sell, so you decide you're never offering it again.

Something may absolutely need to change.

But before you make the change, ask yourself: What am I actually trying to create here?

Your past gives you data. It gives you facts. Use those facts to make decisions based on where you're going, not simply what you're trying to avoid.

Resentment Is Information, Not a Business Strategy

Resentment is information.

Frustration is information.

Burnout is information.

Fear is information.

A red-flag client is information.

I'm not telling you to ignore any of it. I'm telling you to figure out what that information is showing you.

I recently spoke with a potential client who was resentful about longtime clients paying significantly less than what she felt her current work was worth. She wanted to honor their existing pricing, and that was a choice she was making.

But if she wasn't going to change their pricing, we couldn't build her entire future strategy around being resentful about the past.

The bigger question became: What do you actually want on the other side of this?

Stop Letting Your Past Self Build Your Future Business

If every decision is based on something you never want to experience again, your past is still controlling your business.

You might change the offer.

You might change the price.

You might put different boundaries around it.

You might package everything differently.

But if you're still operating entirely from what happened before, you're not actually building forward.

This is where desire and intention matter.

What do you want the offer to look like?

How do you want to deliver it?

Who do you want to work with?

How much do you want to make?

What capacity do you want?

What profit margin are you working toward?

Now we have something we can actually build a business strategy around.

“I Don't Want This” Isn't Enough Information

If you tell me, “I don't want to work this much anymore,” I understand what you're moving away from.

But I still don't know where we're going.

Do you want to work 25 hours per week?

Do you want to stop working by 4:00 because your kids are home?

Do you want fewer one-to-one clients?

Do you want a group program because you no longer have capacity for individual delivery?

Those answers give us direction.

Inside the Focused Visionary Framework, your Pricing, Pipeline, and Sales strategies have to support that direction.

Once we know what you're building toward, we can determine the offers, capacity, customer journey, lead generation, and sales process required to get there.

Don't Burn Down a Strategy Because You Didn't Like How You Were Doing It

Maybe you're completely over sales calls.

Your immediate reaction could be:

“I'm never doing another sales call again.”

But is that actually what your future business needs?

Maybe you don't hate sales calls. Maybe you hate having unqualified people on your calendar.

Instead of eliminating them completely, you could change the process.

Have conversations in the DMs first.

Create a qualification process.

Require an application before someone gets on your calendar.

Be more selective about who gets a call.

The lesson from your past doesn't have to be, “I'm never doing this again.”

It can be, “I'm going to do this differently, and here's how.”

Facts Over Emotion Doesn't Mean Ignoring Emotion

I talk about facts over emotion constantly, but that doesn't mean emotions don't matter.

They do.

If you're frustrated because clients have too much access to you, there may be a legitimate fact underneath that frustration.

Why do they have too much access?

Did you create unclear boundaries?

Is the communication channel the problem?

Do you actually enjoy being accessible but need to structure that access differently?

For example, I want my clients to have access to me. But I don't want client conversations mixed into my personal text messages, so I use a separate messaging platform.

The solution isn't necessarily removing access.

The solution is understanding the actual problem and creating something better.

Ask Yourself Which Direction You're Moving

Here's the reframe I want you to use:

Am I making this decision to get away from something, or am I making this decision because it's moving me toward something I want?

Sometimes the answer will be both.

That's okay.

Just get very clear on the second part before you make the decision.

Resentment might show you that something needs to change. It shouldn't necessarily decide what you change it into.

You Can't Create a Strategy Without a Destination

Imagine telling me you want to take a road trip and the only information you give me is:

“I know I don't want to go to Georgia.”

Okay.

Where are we going?

Tennessee?

South Florida?

Somewhere completely different?

Knowing where you don't want to go doesn't give us enough information to create the route.

Business strategy works the same way.

If you only know what you don't want, you don't have a destination to build toward.

That's why your North Star matters.

Your North Star can evolve as your business and life change. But you need a direction before you start changing offers, pricing, marketing, or investing money into another solution.

Build the Next Version From Desire and Intention

Before you hire another coach, change your messaging, rebuild your offer suite, or invest money trying to fix something, ask yourself what you're actually trying to create.

What do you desire?

What does the next version of your service-based business need to look like?

What income does it need to generate?

What capacity do you want?

What kind of clients do you want to serve?

Then create the strategy.

Your past experiences matter. Learn from them.

But don't let your past self build your future business.

Use the information you've gained to intentionally build toward what you actually want.

FREE WORKSHOP REGISTRATION - THEY FOUND YOU...NOW WHAT?

Resources Mentioned

• Get your FREE Ceo Income Plan
• Book a CEO Strategy Call
• Learn more about The Missing Piece Intensive
• Learn more about The Focused Visionary Accelerator
• Download the FREE Lead and Conversion Tracker
• Subscribe to the Sunday Morning Brew Newsletter

About the Host:

Michelle DeNio is a business strategist based in Sarasota, Florida, specializing in helping service-based entrepreneurs break through revenue plateaus using her Focused Visionary Framework. With over 300 podcast episodes and 9 years running her consulting business, she helps coaches, consultants, and service providers scale sustainably through strategic planning, pricing optimization, and sales process development.

Connect with Michelle

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Coming at you with a second mindset style ish episode for this month.

Actually, I would love to hear your feedback on what episodes you actually like.

You guys love, like, please, because I have, like, a lot of fun ideas for the podcast.

Like, I've got some good episodes coming up, I think, but I actually really love sharing some of these more mindset ones.

It's, it's, you know, it's easy for me to give you all these tangibles on sales and pricing pipeline money, and I definitely want to keep doing that.

But we all know that, like, mindset's the hardest part, right?

And I think it's literally one of the biggest battles in business.

And so just giving these episodes and sharing these episodes based, you know, on my own experience and what I'm experiencing with clients, I think are so helpful.

But I would love it if you would either DM me on Instagram or send me an email.

Michelle Michelle denio.com My email is always in the show notes.

And just share with me, like, what type of episodes would you love to see?

Okay.

I don't often ask you guys, and I don't often put a lot of asks on the podcast in general, which is my bad.

But that is one ask I do have.

I would love to hear your feedback on episode topics if you like the mix all things.

Okay?

And so today we're talking about there being a big difference between making a decision in your business because you are trying to get away from something versus making a decision because you are intentionally trying to move toward something.

Okay?

And I see this all the time in business, and here's some examples.

You're resentful that you've been undercharging.

So you decide you're completely changing your pricing and you're going to raise it up.

You are exhausted by clients having too much access to you, maybe because you didn't have a boundary first.

And so in your next offer, you strip most of the access because people take advantage or you're frustrated that something didn't sell.

So you decide, I'm never doing that again.

Right?

And again, maybe something does need to change.

But before we make that decision, I want you to really ask yourself, like, what are we actually trying to create here?

Right?

What is the actual goal?

What is the intention?

Those are always my questions.

What are we trying to achieve here?

Right?

Like, really, really thinking about that.

Because again, you can only operate from the past for so long.

The past gives you data.

The past gives you facts from that data.

From those facts, you then make decisions Based on where you're trying to go, not what you are trying to avoid.

Right?

Like, and this is a big distinction that you need to really sit and think with is like, am I making decisions because I'm trying to avoid something happening, or am I making decisions based on what I am desiring to achieve?

Right.

Again, it gives you information.

Resentment is information.

Frustration, information burnout, information, fear, information, red flag, client information.

I'm not saying ignore it.

I'm not saying that at all.

But there's a difference between saying, this is not working anymore.

This is it.

I'm done.

And.

But here's what I'd like to do instead.

Right?

One identifies the problem, and the second one gives you something to build towards.

Okay, And I'll give you an example.

I was having a conversation with a potential client and she was feeling this resentment, a lot of resentment.

Feeling like she had a lot of people that were paying a very low price based on what she started with.

And she wanted to honor that totally.

Again.

Remember we did the episode around choices, right?

She.

That choice she made is that she wanted to honor that, but she was resentful about it.

Right?

There was a lot of, like, resentment around.

These people aren't paying me, and I'm giving them all this access and.

And they.

They constantly ask me questions, and I'm working six days a week.

Right?

And she'd given too much.

Right?

And that resentment was the basis for wanting to move forward, for wanting to make a change.

Right?

But I had to ask her.

I was like, okay, the resentment is there and I get it, and it's warranted.

I understand it.

Right?

But aside from that, like, leaving that aside, because again, you're not going to change your prices to your current clients, so you have to live with that.

So, like, again, you're.

You, You.

You made the choice.

You don't want to change their prices, therefore you can't continue to live in resentment.

Right?

Like, you can't do both.

But my.

My bigger question was because she was reaching out for coaching.

She was asking, you know, for some recommendations on coaching.

That's a conversation we had around strategy.

She wanted to do new pricing, new offers, new, you know, all the things.

Which, of course, I was like, yeah, absolutely.

Let me help you with this.

She's bookkeeper, you know, whatever.

It doesn't matter.

I have a lot of experience.

I knew I could help her, but I just kept coming back to.

But, like, resentment aside, what are we actually desiring?

Like, what's on the other side of this?

Because every Conversation kept coming back to, but I have these clients, or I. I'm only charging them this or they're only paying this.

And again, like, okay, fine, that.

That was something we did.

We all have clients that are paying us very little, right?

Like, I have some OG clients that pay very little compared to what my new clients pay.

But again, like, that's a choice I made.

But again, like, what is the desire on the other side of it?

Okay, we learned from it, but what are we trying to achieve now?

Right?

So again, like, that is one side of it.

But don't let it be the only thing that makes a decision for you.

Because if you only are making decisions from a place of fear or resentment or frustration, you're going to land yourself in a situation where you likely are going to end up right back in this same exact fear, resentment, frustration, or something else.

Because there was no desire on the other end of it, right?

So looking at it through the lens of like, but what do you actually want the offer to look like?

Is it that you're.

Is it that we are annoyed that people have too much access to us and that's simply a boundary problem?

Right.

Do we actually love that people have access to us and we.

And that's what people love about us, is that we are accessible?

Like, I never get annoyed by that because I tell my clients, like, text me all the time.

Like, my phone stays on, do not disturb.

So, like, I don't ever get resentful about that because I want them to have access to me.

Right?

So are there days that I'm feeling super busy and I'm like, oh, my gosh, I, like, I can't get anything done because I'm talking to clients all day.

Yeah, but again, that's a choice.

That's a choice I made.

Okay, so again, in the future then, when you're making decisions, if that is a deciding factor for you, you look at it of, like, what do I want it to look like?

How do I want it to deliver?

Like, how do I want to deliver it?

Who do you actually want to work with?

Maybe you had a red fed flag clients.

Like, okay, I never want to do that again.

Great.

Okay, but who do you want to work with?

Right?

Like, what is the desire on the other side of it?

How much money do you want to make?

How much capacity do you need to have?

Like, what does your timing look like?

What profit margin are you working towards?

Right, Not a. I just am not making enough money.

Okay, but what are we actually working towards?

Because we can't strategize.

We can't make a plan off of I'm not making enough money.

I didn't like that client.

I don't want to do this again.

Right, Okay.

I understand all of that.

That's information.

Right.

But what's on the other side of it?

Okay, what is, you know, don't let your past self build your future business.

Okay?

That's the thing.

Because if you are constantly making decisions based on what you never want to experience again, what a past client did, what didn't work, where you felt taken advantage of, what you were afraid might happen, then your past is still dictating the business that you're building.

Right?

Right.

It might look different, you might wrap it in a different box and put a different bow on it, but it's the end.

At the end of the day, you're still operating from that place, you're still operating from what happened in the past and you're not actually moving forward.

Right.

And so this is where desire and intention matter when it comes to your strategy.

Right.

Okay.

This is about direction.

This is about making sure that you can see and like actually create action steps around the direction.

Right.

So if you say, I just don't want to work this much anymore.

Okay, great, perfect.

Information.

How many hours are we actually working?

Where do we want to go?

Right.

What is the actual desire?

Well, I really only want to be working 25 hours a week.

I don't want to be working past 4 o' clock once my kids get home.

I really only want to work with one on one clients right now because I don't have the capacity to do a group or I only want to do a group program right now because I don't have the capacity to do one to one.

Okay, great.

Now again, now we've got something to strategize against.

Right.

Because we know where we are heading.

So we're not going to create an offer just from a. I don't want to work with these clients anymore.

It's I.

We are creating an offer from.

We want to work with this type of client in this format.

Okay, perfect.

Now we've got something.

Right again.

Now we can look at your capacity, we can look at your offer suite.

We can create the pipeline that's going to bring people through your entire customer journey in a way that matches up with what you want to do.

If you no longer have the time or energy to do sales calls and you want to switch to DM selling.

Okay, well then we just got to change your pipeline a Little bit, right?

But don't get annoyed and say, I'm never doing a sales call again because they're such a waste of time.

And then somebody who really wants to work with you needs a sales call and you're like, nope, not doing it.

And you're potentially shooting yourself in the foot.

Because again, your past self is making that decision, not your future self.

Your future self gets to.

To say, I'm not going to run my sales calls like this.

I'm going to run them in this way.

And I'm going to be choosy about who I put on my calendar.

I'm going to have done some pre work with, pre conversation with them in the dms.

I'm going to make them fill out a form before they even get on my calendar.

Right.

Like again, you learn from that, but you make decisions from a place of I'm going to do it different.

And this is why not a, I'm never doing this again.

Right?

You don't want to shoot yourself in the foot.

Like, that's the thing.

And sometimes when we are, when we are not moved past these bigger feelings and these things that are just immediately happening, it's very easy to start making place decisions about your business from a place of emotion.

This is why I always say facts over emotion.

Right.

Is the emotion driving you or is the fact driving you?

Both can be true in that statement of I don't want to work this much anymore or this is not working, or my clients are have too much access to me.

That can be a fact.

But there's also an emotion attached to that.

Right?

And so we need to look at what is the actual fact here.

Why are they texting you all the time?

Why.

Why do you have give.

They have too much access to you, right?

Like, what are the facts behind that?

What created that behavior?

And then what is the actual desire on the other side?

It's not that you don't ever want to talk to your clients.

You love talking to your clients.

It's that you want them to only talk to you in this way and not texting.

Like for me, I don't want my clients texting me on my personal text line.

Like, that's why I use WhatsApp or some of these messaging apps.

Because I can separate that from my texting, which is like my personal, my husband, my brother, my mom.

Right.

Like, I don't, I just don't like to mix those.

Okay.

So again, like, we can make decisions around that.

So again, this is kind of like a combination of the episode around choices, right?

Because again, making your choices, but also just being really clear.

And like, what are you building from?

Are you building from everything you don't want or are you building from what you are desiring?

Are you building from what the new intention is, what the new goal is?

Right?

Because if you're building from a I just don't want this, right, what do you think is going to happen?

You keep telling the universe, I don't want, I don't want, I don't want.

And now again, I'm not a big.

I'm not, you know, I know enough to know enough, But I'm not an expert in all things manifestation and understanding the subconscious mind.

But what I do know is that the subconscious mind doesn't understand the difference between do and do not, right?

And so when you say I don't want, it sounds in the subconscious mind the same as I want, right?

So you can't keep operating from this I do not want stage because you're going to get more of what you do not want.

And again, this is growth, right?

Every time you get yourself in this situation, like when you start to feel that resentment, when you start to feel that frustration, that burnout, whatever it is, right?

That's usually a sign that you are on the edge of growth, right?

And so it's that moment where it's like, holy, we, we made it, we've grown, we've learned a lot, right?

And now we get to decide what that next chapter looks like.

Okay, but you're gonna do it from, okay, I've learned a lot.

And now here's what I know to be true.

Here's what I want to do moving forward.

This is not a continuation of, like, this, I don't want.

This is what I don't want.

Okay?

So again, am I making this decision to get away from something, or is.

Am I making this decision because it's moving me toward something I want?

Now, again, if the answer is both, okay, but get very clear on the second part before you make a decision.

Because sometimes resentment is absolutely showing you that something needs to change.

It just shouldn't be the thing deciding what it is that you change.

Okay?

So your past experiences, they matter.

The frustration, the emotions.

The emotions all matter.

But we look at the facts.

What are the facts of the situation?

What are they telling us?

What are we trying to create, and what do we want moving forward?

Okay.

It's very easy to fall into, like, nope, been there, done that, don't want to do that again, right?

It's very easy to fall into that, especially as business owners.

So again, just use this as those quick reframes.

That's what I'm hoping to give you in these episodes is just those moments, they're like, wait a second, let me just stop here and reframe this of.

Okay, we know what you don't want, but really, what's on the other side of that?

Because if there's nothing on the other side of it, you can't create a plan for it.

Right?

Like, how do you create a plan for what you don't want if you don't have a new desire on the other side of it?

Right.

I don't want this.

Okay, what do we do with that?

Like, you quite literally can't do anything with it because how could you?

Like, how can you, you don't know what you, where you're going, right?

That's saying, like, I mean, I use the analogy, I think in an episode a while back of like using, you know, creating a business strategy, like a cross country road trip.

Like, imagine me saying, like, I want to go on vacation.

I just, I know for a fact I do not want to go to Georgia.

Okay, so where are we going?

We know we're not going to Georgia.

That's cool.

We can, we, we know we can work around that.

Are we going to Tennessee?

Are we going to south Florida?

Like, literally, if you don't have a desire on the other side of it, you can't create a plan around it.

Okay.

And that is what I see happening and why people will hire, like, they'll hire the coach, they'll hire the strategist, they'll hire the person, they'll change their messaging, they'll do all of these things, they'll spend all this money.

Right?

This is why before you do these things, I created that new offer.

I don't even know if I've told you about it yet, but it's called before you invest.

It's like mew and me, we meet before you invest in that to make sure A, it's financially responsible and it's not going to cause you to not be able to pay yourself.

And B, we make sure that it's actually in alignment with what you need.

Right?

Because what happens is, is we get into this place of resentment, whatever this, this situation is, and then we like, immediately, like, I'm going to make these changes and usually those changes require hiring or spending or doing something.

And then again, it's not from the place of where we actually want to go.

So we've put all this time and money into things, and we've invested into things that are not really what we need.

And so then this cycle just continues.

Right?

And that's what we're trying to avoid here, right?

That's what we're trying to avoid is saving you time, saving you money, increasing your profit, and making sure that you are building to the direction that you want to truly build to.

Okay, so what do you desire?

What are you trying to create?

What does the next version of this business actually need to look like?

Okay, and once you have those, then you create the strategy.

Because strategy can't be designed to protect you from who you're.

It just can't be designed to just change the past.

Right?

It can't just be designed from what happened before.

We've got to have a new direction that we're going.

That's why I call it the North Star.

That's why I tell everybody your North Star is constantly evolving and changing.

Like it's not just one North Star.

And that's the end of it, right?

Things are going to come up.

Things are going to change.

Okay?

So really thinking about where am I making this decision from?

Is it from what I don't want or what I am desiring?

Simple, right?

Simple little reframes that are going to really help you to make the most strategic, profitable decisions.

Right?

It's all about making sure that you're.

You're making the decisions that are going to make you the most money in the best and most fastest.

Well, that's a double negative in the fastest, most efficient way possible.

That's the goal here.

Right?

That's.

That's the goal.

So again, don't forget to tell me what you like and what you don't like, what type of episodes you want to see, because we've got kind of a mix this month, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on all of them.

DM me.

Send me an email again if you have not downloaded the new CEO income plan, that also is going to help you to create a plan from desire.

Right?

What are you actually trying to achieve?

What income do you need to make?

Don't forget that's a free private podcast download.

It's in the show notes.

I think that's all my announcements for you.

Okay?

So I love you, I believe in you, and I'll see you in the next episode.