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Growing Your Business When You’re Ready for a New Direction
Changing direction in business can make even an experienced business owner feel like a beginner again.
In this conversation, Tiffany talks with Carla Pelcastre, Founder and CEO of Second Wave Counseling and Founder of Second Wave Coaching, about moving from an established mental health group practice into coaching.
Carla’s experience is a useful reminder for coaches and service providers building an online business: starting something new doesn’t mean starting from zero. The skills, decisions, mistakes, and experience from what you’ve already built can come with you.
Business Growth Doesn’t Mean Starting From Scratch
When Carla moved into private practice, it wasn’t necessarily part of a long-term plan. Over time, that private practice grew into a group practice and gave her years of experience as a business owner.
Now, as she builds a coaching business, she’s entering a space where she doesn’t yet have the same history or traction.
That can create an uncomfortable gap. You know you have experience, but the new offer, audience, or direction doesn’t have the results to prove itself yet.
For coaches and service providers, this is an important business mindset shift. Being new to an offer is different from being new to business.
Your existing skills still count. Your ability to work with clients still counts. So does everything you’ve learned about communication, leadership, decision-making, boundaries, and solving problems.
Your Coaching Business Can Grow Before You Feel Established
One of the challenges Carla discusses is talking about Second Wave Coaching while it is still new.
It can feel easier to be visible when there’s already a long list of results behind an offer. It’s much more vulnerable when you’re experimenting, learning, and inviting people into something that hasn’t had years to become established.
But this stage is part of business growth.
Rather than waiting for complete confidence, there’s value in staying connected to the people you want to help. Focusing on clients and their needs can make the internal noise feel less important.
Instead of asking, “Do I look established enough?” the focus can shift toward, “Is this useful to the person I want to serve?”
That’s a very different place to build from.
How to Grow Your Business by Testing a New Direction
A new direction in your online business doesn’t have to begin with having everything figured out. Carla’s experience highlights a few practical ideas coaches and service providers can take into their own growth:
Separate being new from being inexperienced. A new coaching offer doesn’t erase the experience you’ve already built.
Experiment before expecting certainty. A new offer can be something you test, learn from, and refine rather than something that has to be perfect immediately.
Keep clients at the center. When overthinking gets loud, returning to the needs of the people you serve can create clarity.
Face difficult decisions directly. Business growth can involve uncomfortable choices. Avoiding them doesn’t necessarily make them easier.
These ideas are especially relevant when you’re changing niches, adding a new service, moving into coaching, or simply wondering what comes next.
Burnout and Joy Matter in an Online Business
Business growth isn’t only about getting more clients, launching another offer, or reaching the next revenue goal.
Carla and Tiffany also talk about what happens when you genuinely love your work but still experience burnout or overwhelm.
The answer doesn’t always have to be a dramatic life change. Sometimes it can start with intentionally noticing and creating small moments of joy.
That might mean making space for something fun, recognizing what gives you energy, or allowing joy to matter even when there’s serious work to do.
For a coach or service provider, sustainability isn’t separate from business growth. How you experience the business you’re building matters too.
Why This Matters for Coaches and Service Providers
There will be stages in a coaching business when your experience and your current results don’t seem to match.
Maybe you’re launching something new. Maybe the work that once fit no longer feels quite right. Or maybe you know the next direction but feel uncomfortable talking about it before it has traction.
Carla’s story offers another way to look at that stage.
You can be a beginner at one thing while still being an experienced business owner. You can experiment without dismissing what you already know. And you can pursue business growth while making room for more joy along the way.
Inspired to do something brave?
Share it with me and the Business Bravery community on Instagram @tiffanygstudios or use #businessbraverypodcast so we can cheer you on.
🎧 Listen to the full episode here: Business Bravery Podcast
Money Journaling Prompts for Procrastination Blocks
✍️ These 5 daily email prompts took me from $2K months to my first $4K weeks. I had no idea the stories I picked up from my first memories of money that had me overworking, overthinking and procrastinating.
Sharing them with you here: https://tiffany-g-studios.kit.com/5moneyprompts
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