Releasing resistance

Jenni Gritters
5 min readAug 30, 2024

Anthony was frustrated. He’d spent years building the current model of his course and education business. While that model worked incredibly well during the pandemic, it started to slow down in late 2023. When I met with him in early 2024, his revenue was 1/4 of what it had previously been.

We started by talking about what wasn’t working. It was clear that most people didn’t want to buy high-ticket, self-paced courses anymore, and the economic climate meant that they were hesitant to spend money overall. He knew behavior had changed, but he kept pushing at this model anyway. It was like if he just tried harder or marketed more, he’d find a flow state again.

Anthony was exhausted and fed up by the time he hired me for coaching. He knew something had to change. But it was like he was still clawing at the door until his nails were bloody instead of turning around and looking for a window. He didn’t want to give up what worked before.

This made so much sense — and holding onto the old model was keeping him stuck. The old model had worked well when it worked, to the tune of a $400,000 year. But the facts were telling a different story now.

After several sessions, Anthony decided that he needed to set it all down. He pressed pause on most of his marketing, automated what he could, and scheduled three weeks off. He knew he needed a break and his panic was escalating to the point that he couldn’t sleep well and was experiencing old chronic pain symptoms.

--

--

Jenni Gritters

I’m a writer and business coach for freelance creatives based in Central Oregon. I write about the psychology of small business ownership.