Recently I had a research call with someone in my audience where we were talking about content and outreach and what gets in the way, and she said something that I hear all the time.

“I think I stop because it feels like I’m not getting any results.”

Not because she doesn’t know what to do, and not because she isn’t capable of doing it, but because from her perspective, nothing much seems to be happening.

And I think this is where a lot of people quietly fall off.

There’s this underlying assumption that if something is working, you’ll see it. That results will be obvious, visible, and measurable in real time. More responses, more engagement, more signs that it’s landing. Ultimately, more clients.

But that’s not always how it works, especially at the beginning.

Someone shared an analogy with me recently about working on business growth as being like a pot of water on the stove. For a while, it looks completely unchanged. There are no bubbles, no movement, nothing to suggest that anything is happening at all. And yet the temperature is rising the whole time. The water is heating, slowly and steadily, even though you can’t see it.

If you turn the heat off too soon because you think it “isn’t working,” you don’t just pause the process, you reset it. You go back to the beginning and have to start all over again.

Growth activities like content and outreach often work in exactly the same way.

There is a period of time where you are showing up, sharing your thinking, reaching out, and it can feel like very little is coming back. A few likes here and there, maybe a reply, often silence.

It’s very easy in that space to assume it isn’t working.

But what I’ve seen over and over again, both in my own business and with my clients, is that there is far more happening than you realise.

I’ve lost count of the times people have said to me, “I loved your last newsletter” or “That post you shared really stayed with me,” and I’ll realise I had no idea they were even reading. They’ve never replied, never liked, never engaged in any visible way, and yet they’ve been following along, taking it in, and trusting me more in the process. 

The same thing happens with my clients. They’ll tell me they “only” got two or three responses to something they shared, and they dismiss it almost immediately because they’re focused on all the people who didn’t engage.

But those two or three people matter. They are paying attention. They are leaning in. They are often much closer to working with you than the numbers suggest. A brilliant coach once said to me, “Your next client is right in front of you,” and half the time I think we’re too busy looking out there to see them.

When you overlook this, you miss the actual signal. Because here’s the thing: 

Not all results are visible.

Attention is a result. Recognition is a result. Trust building is a result. They just don’t always show up in ways that are easy to measure or validate in the moment.

And if you only trust what you can see, you will almost always assume it’s not working far sooner than is actually true.

That’s the point where people stop, or pivot, or start something new, thinking they need a different strategy, when in reality they just haven’t stayed with the current one long enough.

At the same time, there’s another question that matters just as much.

It’s not only “is this working?” or even “have I stayed with this long enough?”

It’s also “am I doing this in a way that can actually create results?”

Because consistency on its own isn’t enough.

You can show up every week with content, but if what you’re sharing doesn’t speak to a clear problem your ideal clients are facing, it’s unlikely to lead anywhere.

You can be reaching out to people regularly, but if those conversations stay at the level of friendly catch-ups, without any direction or depth, they’re unlikely to turn into opportunities.

So there are two things to hold at the same time.

Staying in the process long enough for the invisible to become visible.

And making sure that what you’re doing is actually designed to create results in the first place.

When those two things come together, that’s when momentum builds.