https://www.wearemavenly.co.uk/blog daily 0.75 2026-08-24 https://www.wearemavenly.co.uk/blog/are-you-building-a-business-youll-secretly-grow-to-hate-2yr6p monthly 0.5 2026-09-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/68ebc54be323945999530369/5a6dff0c-ef7f-41dd-83a4-9e4d1cdb0205/IMG_0034.jpeg Blog - The problem you think you have might not actually be the problem. - Sometimes the answer is much simpler than we think I’ve been guilty of this myself. There have been periods in my own business where I’ve looked at what other people are doing, listened to clever strategies and assumed there must be some sophisticated answer I haven’t figured out yet. Sometimes there is, and sometimes we have simply overcomplicated the life out of something that was sitting right in front of us. I was reminded of this recently when I was working alongside a group of people on a client’s business. We were all looking at different aspects of the business, but ultimately we were all there because we wanted to help her become more visible and, by proxy, grow the business. She said to me, “We’ve all been at this a year now and I need to start seeing some ROI.” It was a completely reasonable thing to say. She had invested time, money and energy into the business and wanted to see something coming back from it. But we’d all become so deep in the business that we had started talking in increasingly highbrow terms about funnels, positioning and implementation. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/68ebc54be323945999530369/a6b1796f-e0c9-4a7b-9f2b-7fcde418cc1c/260722-3793-Edit.jpg Blog - The problem you think you have might not actually be the problem. - And sometimes the market really has changed When I started my business almost four years ago, LinkedIn was in its absolute heyday for me. The VA industry was in demand. I could show up as myself, post on LinkedIn and land clients. I didn’t need to worry about an email list, I didn’t need a lead magnet, I didn’t need a secondary platform and I didn’t need to get into people’s DMs. I was landing clients easy peasy, a lot of us were. But things changed. Business became harder. People became more cautious and more selective about where they spent their money. The online business world became noisier and, unfortunately, a lot of people got burnt by people selling things that didn’t deliver what they promised. That changes how people buy. It doesn’t mean your business is broken, it means the environment has moved. And successful businesses have to move with it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/68ebc54be323945999530369/8574f986-ee01-48b3-b7be-50a5ae077966/Lois_+Culture+Camp+Headshots-6.jpg Blog - The problem you think you have might not actually be the problem. - Make it stand out Lois Bates—Stubbs is a strategic consultant and founder of Mavenly, a VA and EA agency based in Manchester. She works with women in business who are ready to stop carrying everything alone. The Reset Room free, monthly on the 2nd Tuesday. https://www.wearemavenly.co.uk/blog/are-you-building-a-business-youll-secretly-grow-to-hate monthly 0.5 2026-08-24 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/68ebc54be323945999530369/b262812b-a1f0-4655-98ac-b565511fb61f/f176cfc1-21f0-4889-80e7-c215d5254e74.jpeg Blog - Are You Building a Business You’ll Secretly Grow to Hate? - The Networking Moment I’ve been in many a room, looking every inch the part, and had someone stand in front of me and say “you are absolutely smashing it, look at you go.” And I could see on their face that they genuinely meant it. Maybe they were rooting for me, maybe I’d given them hope about where they were going, maybe they just really liked me. Either way I smiled and said thank you so much, it’s been a brilliant year. Then I went back to my hotel room and thought, why couldn’t I just tell them the truth? That I was earning the same as twelve months ago despite working triple the hours, that I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing next, that I was tired in a way a good night’s sleep wasn’t fixing. Because it would have shattered the image. Because I didn’t want to disillusion them. And honestly, I wouldn’t have known where to start. This is how you end up building a business you secretly grow to hate. It doesn’t happen all at once, it’s not a dramatic “Oh my God, I hate it all”. It’s a slow realisation that you’ve stopped recognising what you’re working for, the joy goes quiet, the stress levels rise and because everyone around you is telling you how well you’re doing, you can’t even say it out loud. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/68ebc54be323945999530369/cd748066-590f-4aa3-b055-aa22f8a3c788/IMG_2183.jpeg Blog - Are You Building a Business You’ll Secretly Grow to Hate? - I Did This Too, More Recently Than I’d Like To Admit Let me be completely transparent with you, because I lived this. Last October I rebranded, became a limited company, went VAT registered, and then spent the best part of seven months in a complete spiral. I just didn’t know what to do, so I did all of it. I looked elsewhere for my tone of voice, I tried to be punchier, I tried to be spicier. I packaged up VA services in a hundred different ways and spent the whole time fighting against the one thing I actually knew I was good at, which was working as a strategic business consultant for women who’d already built something brilliant. I was outsourcing my own self belief to other people. And the more opinions I gathered, the less I trusted anything I knew about myself. Someone told me, with genuine good intentions, that to be taken seriously at a higher level I needed to stop being so friendly, approachable, and girl next door and for a while, I actually tried to do that. I gave up my own magic because somebody else told me it wasn't enough for the level I was aiming for. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/68ebc54be323945999530369/8574f986-ee01-48b3-b7be-50a5ae077966/Lois_+Culture+Camp+Headshots-6.jpg Blog - Are You Building a Business You’ll Secretly Grow to Hate? - Make it stand out Lois Bates—Stubbs is a strategic consultant and founder of Mavenly, a VA and EA agency based in Manchester. She works with women in business who are ready to stop carrying everything alone. The Reset Room free, monthly on the 2nd Tuesday. https://www.wearemavenly.co.uk/blog/your-business-your-life-your-heart-and-your-head-are-all-one-thing-4crs3 monthly 0.5 2026-08-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/68ebc54be323945999530369/2fa65bb6-0000-4436-af68-e8e03793c66e/Lois_+Culture+Camp+Headshots-13.jpg Blog - The Wardrobe of Other People’s Coats. - The gap that gave it away. For a long time I genuinely couldn’t work out why. The engagement on LinkedIn looked fine. People were telling me I was smashing it, that the content was great, that they loved what I was putting out. But nobody was booking calls. Nobody was converting. The interest had dried up while the compliments kept rolling in, and that gap should have told me everything sooner than it did. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/68ebc54be323945999530369/8574f986-ee01-48b3-b7be-50a5ae077966/Lois_+Culture+Camp+Headshots-6.jpg Blog - The Wardrobe of Other People’s Coats. - Make it stand out Lois Bates—Stubbs is the founder of Mavenly, a VA and EA agency based in Manchester. She works with women in business who are ready to stop carrying everything alone. The Reset Room free, monthly on the 2nd Tuesday. https://www.wearemavenly.co.uk/blog/your-business-your-life-your-heart-and-your-head-are-all-one-thing-3sdgx monthly 0.5 2026-07-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/68ebc54be323945999530369/8574f986-ee01-48b3-b7be-50a5ae077966/Lois_+Culture+Camp+Headshots-6.jpg Blog - The Women Scaling Sustainably Are Not Doing It Alone. - Make it stand out Lois Bates—Stubbs is the founder of Mavenly, a VA and EA agency based in Manchester. She works with women in business who are ready to stop carrying everything alone. 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