Episode 5: Why Hustle Can’t Outrun Market Changes
Show Notes:
Tired of working harder just to keep up? This episode reveals how to spot when your old marketing playbook is actually slowing you down and what to do next.
Listen If:
You’re pushing through with more effort, but seeing fewer results and suspect your message or strategy might be out of sync with where the market (or you!) is headed.
What We’re Covering in This Episode:
This episode dives into why the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra doesn’t hold up in today’s shifting market landscape. Dani unpacks the subtle, early signs that your marketing might be falling out of sync before it becomes a crisis. You’ll hear why it’s so easy to miss these changes when you’re deep in your own business, how external and internal shifts (think evolving clients, changing platforms, and even your own growth) can quietly sabotage results, and why a regular reality check (and a fresh perspective!) are the smartest ways to stay ahead.
Key Takeaways:
Don’t wait for a crisis—look for subtle early warning signs: misaligned leads, thinning margins, or that “itch” your website doesn’t match who you are now.
Stop going it alone: Even seasoned founders can miss shifts when deep in the day-to-day. Outside eyes = clarity, quickly.
Build regular “alignment check-ins” to stress-test your message, offers, and audience every 6–12 months—before the water boils over.Thanks for pulling up a chair with me today. See you next time—I’ll make sure to save you a seat.
Curious what you’re missing (or sensing it’s time for a reset)? Book a free Strategy Consultation and let’s spot your next shift—together.
Learn more about VIP Days to help you work through this and get back into market ASAP.
Transcript:
I hate to break it to you, but when it comes to marketing, “if it ain't broke, don't fix it” is just a mantra that does not apply.
Working in your marketing today might be keeping you afloat, but it could also be holding you back from the bigger opportunities right in front of you. Marketing lives in a constant state of change. Your clients evolve, the platforms you're using evolve, even you as a person evolve. And if you're not paying attention, it could be kind of like that lobster in a pot, you know, swimming along, doing what you think is the right thing, but not realizing that the water is slowly getting hotter around you.
I'm Dani Henneberger, the founder of Mise en Plan and your host here at the table. I help seasoned founders and entrepreneurs reposition their offers, rethink their strategy and realign their messaging when that usual marketing playbook just isn't working or just doesn't feel like enough.
In this episode, I want to break down why what's working might already mean you're slipping behind, and, even if it looks fine on the surface, what the early warning signs that a marketing shift might be creeping up on you are—and why an outside perspective is often the difference between staying steady and stepping into a new opportunity. So if you've been sensing a little bit of a shift around you, even if you can't quite name what it is yet, pull up a chair; this one's for you.
I don't know if you've noticed, but there's been a lot going on out there. Some of it directly affects me and my business, some of it doesn't. In fact, every day, we're all being fed a slightly different version of what's happening out there. I had a fascinating conversation with someone on the day that DC went under unwarranted martial law. And as someone from DC, that was pretty prevalent in my newsfeed, and the person I was talking to really didn't have very much of an idea at all about that, because all she'd been seeing was the news about Taylor Swift's new album—which I knew nothing about because it hadn't once been in my newsfeed. But now, I know why sourdough saw a huge spike in searches, but I digress.
This isn't meant to be political at all. It's just meant to demonstrate that things are going on in a million different directions and some of these things do directly or even indirectly matter in your day-to-day, maybe in your personal life or in your business. And here's where I want to set the stage: the reality is, your marketing and your business do not exist in a vacuum.
Those external forces matter, whether they are economic cycles, so situations like everything we went through in COVID that revolutionized the way we do business. Things like the tariffs now—whether they're happening, whether they're not—inflation, even AI adoption or cultural shifts. All of these things are changing how our clients filter the way that they make their decisions.
And with that, customer behavior is another thing that's shifting. Buyers are doing more DIY research; they're more skeptical of the messages that are coming their way. Many are also at the same time leaning on AI for help instead of hiring out. They're expecting a sharper differentiation and a faster trust building experience with you and your brand.
When it comes to channels, those are shifting too. Social reach is just honestly not hitting the way it used to. Ads are costing a lot more. SEO rules are changing overnight, it seems. Now you don't only have to worry about optimizing for your website and Google search, but also for AI. If you've built your system for how you do your marketing based on last year's rules of whatever the algorithm was, you know, it's just not going to be working the same.
And competition is also ramping up. There are new competitors in a million different spaces, both direct and indirect competitors, because in certain circumstances—like under economic shift where people are feeling a lot more strain in their budgets and in their wallets—your biggest competition may actually end up being doing nothing. That's not really a competitor, but it's actually your biggest one. I'll do a whole other episode on that because it's actually fascinating.
And in other times, it might not necessarily be about losing to competitors; it's about blending in—not blending in, I guess I should say—into that same sea of sameness, especially with AI copywriting out there making everything kind of sound the same.
And let's face it. The biggest thing that changes over time is you. You evolve, you change. You started your business to do one thing, and that might still be working, but what if you're a different you than when you started it? My money says even if you started your business a year or two ago, you're probably a different person now than you were then. And that's no shame. In fact, it's great. It means that we're growing. But if this is the case, then the offer or message that you built years ago might not reflect where you are right now, or the people you want to be serving, or what your best clients need today. And this is why that whole concept— and there are a million other reasons too, so this is just kind of the cliff notes version— but this is why that “if it ain't broke” mindset is really dangerous, because it doesn't account for the world that is existing around you.
Plus, I've seen way too many 90s-esque websites in 2025 that this feels very imperative to share. You know, it's time to make sure we're looking holistically at what we're doing.
So let's make this practical. How do you know if the water is heating up before it actually boils you whole?
My first recommendation is to stay informed—and stay informed beyond your little bubble. When big things come out, I want you to ask yourself how this might affect me, how it might affect my suppliers, or even my ideal customers, whether it's now or in the future. It always makes sense to find some marketing newsletters, some news roundups. I know I used to love getting the Skim. I now get several marketing newsletters that you probably don't want to have, but it helps me stay informed beyond just the doom scroll on Instagram, so I can stay informed on what's going on and use it to help me help my clients as well.
It's a really good exercise to do and something that I recommend. Another thing that you can look at is how your engagement is going, not just on social media, but on your website and in your ads and in any of the marketing that you're doing, even if it's in-person marketing.
If people are showing interest but not converting, or vice versa, where once people show interest they are converting, but you're not getting as much interest as you were before, that's usually a sign that something has shifted there.
Another thing is if your customer profile has shifted quietly—if people who are showing up and getting aligned with you are not the ones you originally built for, then that's a sign that there's a whole market out there that you haven't been intentionally tapping and it's probably time to start thinking about them.
If your sales are steady, but those margins are getting a little bit thinner, that usually means there's room for us to start thinking about whether there might be another ideal client market that might be willing to pay more, or there's a need for us to shift what we're offering so that we can accommodate those margins a little bit better, or just hit our revenue targets where we want to be.
Another thing to look at is just—and this is something that a lot of people don't do—go onto your own website. Go onto your website, click around, experience it like somebody who is going there for the first time, and see if your website or your copy just feels off. If it feels like it belongs to an earlier version of you, if there are things in there that don't reflect your current values, your current positioning, the current things you have to offer or the people that, or feel like it'll resonate with the people you're trying to talk to, maybe you're even just bored of it—any of these things are also flags saying, maybe it's time to take a look and see what we can do differently.
And the clearest sign is, honestly, if it's been over a year since you took a minute and sniff tested or stress tested your message and/or your marketing strategy. I think it's something that is really important to do on a regular basis. You know, all of these things are little nudges. And there are several more, but these are some of the core little nudges that tell you that something's moving and it's time to maybe check the temperature and see how that water's doing around us.
Now, all those things are honestly easier said than done. I've been in marketing for over a decade, doing this, helping people one to one, running my own business, managing my own marketing, and I'll be honest, it is easier said than done because we are all too close to our own stuff. That's why we all miss it. We don't catch the drift until it's already costing us. And even then, sometimes we wait a little too long. We're just too close. When you're in the pot, you don't feel the gradual heat.
And seasoned founders in particular are great at executing, which means that you can muscle through some of those declining returns without realizing that the underlying message is actually what slipped out of alignment, causing you to do so much more work.
This isn't about failure, it's about evolution. You didn't outgrow your business, you outgrew the last message you built it on and you've been trying to do it alone. Even if you have a team around you, you're all in the trenches together and you're all a little bit too close to it.
So my best advice is to take a minute and get some of that outside perspective. Find out what someone else sees in the magic that you have to bring to the market—the holes you've been missing, the opportunities that are there that you hadn't quite seen. That's why we miss the signs. We're trying to do too much ourselves.
So if you're trying to figure out whether that water is heating up around you and you're starting to feel it, what do you actually do about it? Well, first, build in those checkpoints. Like I said, once a year at minimum, I want you to think and pause and sniff test your message and your website and everything against the market that you're actually in today.
Think about who you're serving. Who are the people that are coming? Who are your best customers? Who are the customers that you want ten more of? And if they're different than the ones that you've been trying to talk to, then that means you need to make a shift. I recommend doing this every six months.
It doesn't have to be a blow-it-all-up-and-start-all-over-again thing. No, I don't want it to be an overhaul, but it does need to be intentional and it does need to be honest. Now, does that mean you need to bring someone in every six months to help you do this? No, but I do recommend seeing what you can do about getting an outside perspective. You can't see the frame when you're inside the picture; you can't feel the water when you're in the pot.
Having someone look in with clear eyes who is completely agnostic to your brand and who you are is often the fastest way to see what shifted, because they'll ask you the hard questions and they'll help you see the forest from the trees, if you will. Today is apparently idiot and metaphor day, but just go with me here.
But that's exactly why I created my VIP Day. I wanted to create a structured space to give founders and entrepreneurs and teams the opportunity to step out of that day-to-day where we are just on automation, getting stuff done and not really seeing how the things happening around us are affecting us or how things have changed or where there may be opportunities on the table, because I want to help you zoom out. I want to help that realignment of the message, of the offer, of your strategy so that you're not leaving those bigger opportunities on the table, even if things are feeling just fine.
There's always room for us to step out, have a different perspective and see where it takes us.
If this episode has sparked something in wanting to take a look at your market, your customers, your offers, you as a person, and you're wondering if things are happening and heating up around you, that's really what I love to help navigate. And so if you're curious what all of this can look like for your business, just send me a note. I would love to help you check it out. I'll put a link in the show notes. I'd love to find the spot, find the shift and use it to your advantage.
And hey, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next conversation. I really want to thank you for pulling up a chair with me today. I'll see you next time. I'll make sure to save you a seat.
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