I want to tell you about the weird few weeks I had at the start of 2026, because I think a lot of you might be living through something similar right now and nobody is really talking about it honestly.
Sales were slow. Subscribers were leaving. My content felt off in a way I couldn’t quite name.
I was showing up, sending emails, posting on Threads, doing everything I was supposed to be doing and something just wasn’t landing the way it used to.
So naturally I did what every online business owner does when things start feeling off. I started questioning everything. My niche, my content, my strategy, my offers.
Maybe I needed to post more. Maybe my emails weren’t good enough. Maybe I was doing something fundamentally wrong and just couldn’t see it.
I was spiraling so much and the more I tried to fix things from a strategic level, the worse everything felt.
And then I came across a quote on Pinterest that kind of stopped me…
“Your business is a reflection of who you are.”
I read it a few times and something about it felt uncomfortably, specifically true.
When Your Business Feels Off, Look Inward First
Here’s what was actually going on in my life during that period, and it had nothing to do with my content strategy.
I wasn’t sleeping properly. I wasn’t eating real meals. I’d stopped moving my body.
I was pushing through everything on autopilot, ignoring how I actually felt, just grinding away and hoping things would eventually turn around on their own.
I’d stopped doing things that made me feel alive, the simple things, the things that had nothing to do with building a business at all.
My inner world was completely on empty and my business was reflecting that back at me perfectly.
The content felt flat because I felt flat. The emails lacked energy because I had no energy left to give. I kept trying to pour from a cup that had nothing left in it and wondering why nothing was coming out.
It wasn’t a strategy problem. It was a me problem, and the moment I realized that, everything started to change.
What I Actually Did To Turn Things Around
Nothing business related. Genuinely, nothing.
I stopped obsessing over my strategy and started taking care of myself instead. Sleeping properly. Getting outside every day. Moving my body. Eating real meals.
Letting myself actually feel things instead of just pushing through everything on autopilot. I started living my actual life again instead of just documenting it from a burned out, exhausted place.
And slowly, not overnight but slowly, the spark came back. The joy of writing came back. The genuine excitement about what I was building came back.
And then out of nowhere the business responded. One Threads post went viral. Then another. Then another.
Over 200 new subscribers joined my email diary in a single week. Sales started coming in unexpectedly. My open rates hit 63% on emails I wrote in twenty minutes because I actually had something real to say again.
I hadn’t changed my strategy at all. I’d just changed how I felt on the inside.
Why This Matters Even More When You Build Through Writing
There’s something about building an income through writing, through a blog and an email diary, that makes it completely different from almost any other business model out there.
Your real life is your content.
Not a curated version of it, not a performed highlight reel, but your actual honest life. The things you’re genuinely thinking about. The moments you’re really living through. The feelings you’re actually carrying.
Which means when your inner world is on empty, your content will feel empty too. You can’t fake genuine connection. Readers feel it immediately when something is forced or hollow, even if they can’t articulate exactly why.
But when you’re actually living, taking care of yourself, feeling things, that energy comes through in everything you write. People feel it. They subscribe, they stay, they trust you, they eventually invest in what you’re building.
That’s genuinely how I built this whole thing.
From a hotel receptionist crying over failed reels to running an email diary from beach cafes and winter cottages. Not by being the most strategic person in the room, but by being the most honest one.
Writing about what was actually happening. Showing up as myself even during the messy seasons.
What I Want You To Take From This
If your content feels flat right now, if sales are slow, if something just feels off and you can’t figure out why… stop trying to fix your strategy first.
Ask yourself honestly when you last actually took care of yourself.
When did you last sleep a full night, eat a real meal, go outside for no reason, do something that had absolutely nothing to do with your business?
Your outer world genuinely cannot flourish when your inner world is running on empty. Take care of yourself first. The rest has a funny way of falling into place.
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And if part of taking care of yourself looks like finally building something that actually feels like you, something you can write from a beach cafe or a winter cottage or anywhere in between, Her Soft Blog Mini-Playbook is exactly how I built all of this.
