Feeling uninspired when you think about your business? It happens to every entrepreneur at some point. You get bored with your offers and feel like you can’t spend one more minute talking about your products and services.

You know you don’t want to quit your business — but you aren’t sure how to bring back your passion and motivation either. What’s the solution to small business burnout?

First of all, don’t panic. This isn’t necessarily a sign that something’s going wrong in your business or that you need to “scrap everything and start over.” Also, just because you feel a little burned out with your offers doesn’t mean that your potential buyers or clients agree. They’re still buying, still learning, still engaging.

However, you can’t stay in this uninspired state forever. Your long-term success depends on building (and maintaining) enthusiasm about your offers. If you aren’t bringing any enthusiasm to the table, your customers will absolutely be able to tell eventually. If they sense you’re not into what you’re doing, they’ll start looking elsewhere.

Let’s get ahead of that problem by talking about what you can do when you start to feel small business burnout or a lack of interest in your offers. 

Identify what you’re feeling and why

First, let’s take a minute to think about what you’re really feeling. Are you experiencing some fatigue in promoting your products? Or is it something bigger: burnout with your business in general? If that’s the case, it might be necessary to take a short sabbatical or re-examine your motivations and desire to keep running your business.

But if you’re just tired of marketing your products and services, the solution might be to adopt a different approach. (No, the solution is not to create a new offer.) The sooner you can do that, the better. Your audience can tell when you’re just phoning it in, so make a plan to shake things up.

Before you start making that plan, though, do a little introspection. Can you figure out why you’re feeling this way?

• Are you bored with the use of repetitive marketing strategies?
• Are you feeling uncreative and unable to innovate your offers?
• Have your business goals changed?
• Do you have different personal interests than when you started your business?
• Are you feeling disillusioned with your industry?
• Are you feeling like it’s time to pivot?

Maybe none of those explanations feel just right. Sometimes it’s hard to pin down the exact cause of your feelings. If you’ve been running your business for years, getting bored occasionally is a pretty normal experience.

But identifying the cause of your feelings is a good thing. It gives you better insight and helps you decide how you want to proceed.

Re-evaluate your offers

Now it’s time to dive into your business and your offers. This is your chance to evaluate each of your products and services and decide whether you can bring back your enthusiasm for them. Here are some important questions to ask about each of your offers:

• Do you enjoy working on it? Or do you dread delivering it to your clients?
• Do your clients regularly purchase it? Or is it just sitting on the “shelf”?
• Does it get good reviews? Or is there minimal or negative feedback?
• Is it profitable? Or does the time and effort it takes outweigh the revenue?

After you go through these questions for each of your offers, you should be able to tell which ones you want to keep as is and which ones you want to change (or which offers you want to retire). 

This is also your chance to think about which offers could be moved into a passive funnel, which would allow you to keep selling them without having to run live launches or constantly come up with new marketing ideas. 

Adapt your offers and marketing

Now it’s time to innovate. You can make changes to your offers, marketing strategies, or both. Often, just reconnecting with your offers in a different way can help rekindle your enthusiasm. 

For example, can you get some new testimonials from satisfied customers? Maybe request some video testimonials — this format can really help viewers feel the impact of the product. (And it reminds you why you do this work!) 

Another option is to try collaborating with another person or company. Is there an influencer who promotes similar products? Reach out and see if they want to work with you. Do you know someone with a complementary offer? See if you can collaborate. Working with someone else can help you see your offers from a different perspective.

Once you’ve tweaked your products, take a look at your marketing approach. Are there changes you can make there? Here are some suggestions:

• Try out a new marketing channel, platform, and/or medium. For example, try filming a how-to video for a product or starting a Substack to share your expertise. 
• Consider a new marketing strategy, like an email campaign, content marketing, or paid advertising.
• Evaluate your social media presence. If you feel like you can’t keep up, consider reducing the number of platforms you want to be active on.
• Consider moving one (or more) of your offers to a passive marketing strategy, like a sales funnel.

There’s no objectively “best” approach here. The most important thing is to find a way to rediscover your motivation. Your audience can tell when you’re personally invested in what you’re selling. If you are, they’ll feed off that energy. And if you’re just going through the motions, they’ll quickly pick up on that and move on.

Build a sales funnel

One of the best ways to overcome marketing fatigue is to find a way to promote your products that doesn’t require you to do the things you’re burned out on. For most business owners, that means switching to passive marketing and eliminating the need to maintain a continual launch cycle or constantly talk about the offers you’re just “not feeling” anymore. 

What’s the answer? I usually recommend a sales funnel. With a sales funnel, you don’t have to actively promote your offer. You can automate most of the marketing as well. Customers still hear about your offers and get encouraged to buy, but most of that happens “behind the scenes” without active participation from you.

Here are some sales funnel examples:

• Create an evergreen webinar and offer it for free to anyone who provides their email address. Promote your offer in the webinar and in the email sequence that follows.
• Create a PDF resource and set it up as a free lead magnet. You can mention your offer in the freebie and then send users an email nurture sequence that promotes your offer.
• Follow the “freemium” model by offering a version of your product with limited features. Encourage free trial customers to purchase the full version to unlock all the features.
• Run ads that push potential customers directly to checkout. (This strategy might not be right for some offers/industries.)

A funnel strategy makes it easier to target certain sectors of your audience, which can improve your ROI. It’s also a good way to encourage more customer engagement — a free lead magnet can build enthusiasm in your audience and bring in new customers.

Track and optimize your funnel

While a sales funnel significantly reduces the hands-on work of selling your products, it’s not a “set it and forget it” solution. It’s important to continuously monitor your funnel and make changes to optimize its performance.

Monitoring your funnel means checking your metrics. Make sure you’ve got your analytics system set up and that you know how to understand the numbers. Track these metrics:

• Traffic to your opt-in page
• Leads generated
• Performance of your email nurture sequence
• Overall sales numbers

Use those numbers to identify weak points in your funnel and make changes. Are people visiting your opt-in page but not giving their email addresses? Are they enjoying the freebie but not purchasing your paid offer? Track the customer journey from start to finish and make changes as necessary.

Small business burnout isn’t the end of the road

It’s normal to feel tired of your offers, clients, or business once in a while. But feeling burned out by your offers doesn’t necessarily mean you need to make drastic changes. It might just indicate that you need to make small changes to your offers and your marketing strategy.

Evolving your offers, trying a new marketing medium or platform, and developing a sales funnel are great ways to revitalize your passion for the work you’re delivering. 

If you need some extra motivation and encouragement, let’s talk more. You’ll get personalized advice, expert resources, and support from a consultant who truly cares about your success. Plus, I’ll be your sounding board for those days/weeks when you’re feeling discouraged and disengaged with your offers. I’ll help you figure out what to do next — so you don’t do anything drastic.