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379

 – How to Love Your Business Again, Not Just Run It

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Hosted by HerBusiness

On air:

17 September 2026

What if you got to love your business, not just run it?

For the majority of established women business owners, that question almost feels silly to ask… as if loving your business and your work is a reqard you only earn once you’ve proven yourself enough to deserve it. In this episode, Suzi Dafnis makes the case that it actually works the other way around. Loving what you do, and learning how to love your business again isn’t the dessert you get after years of finishing your vegetables. It’s actually the engine that increases your momentum, drives your growth, and lets you decide on the best (and most fulfilling) long-term strategy for your business.

So if there is a sense of ‘flatness’ in your business, resist that initial urge to fix it (something we talked about in last week’s episode: Sell Your Business or Rebuild It? What Every Established Woman Entrepreneur Eventually Asks). Because it won’t go away with a new system, or a new offer, or basic re-organisation. Underneath is a far more uncomfortable question — whether you actually love any of it.

Today, we’re talking about how you can learn to love your business again, even if you’ve been in the same routine for years or decades. And discover tools you can actually use this week to identify the parts of business that light you up, and make you feel most alive.

What You’ll Discover in Episode 379: How to Love Your Business Again, Not Just Run It

  • Why loving what you do gets treated as something you EARN eventually in your career… and why “eventually” almost never arrives, no matter the revenue or the milestones hit
  • The subtle way successful women learn to “sand down their wanting,” until the business runs beautifully and you can’t remember the last time you were excited to open your laptop
  • The difference between a business that’s technically thriving and one that’s empty… and why the second kind doesn’t work for long
  • A plus-or-minus exercise for reading your actual week the same way you’d read a number on a spreadsheet
  • One thing you can stop doing to love your business more, and one thing that must be protected (these can happen without you redesigning your whole business)
  • Why the things you protect on your own calendar actually teach your team what’s allowed for them, too
  • Three questions that you can sit with this week, including one that might scare you just a little

Three Questions to Sit With This Week

  1. If you tracked your whole week, adding a plus or minus beside each task based only on whether you loved doing it (NOT whether it went well)… what percentage do you think would land in the plus column?
  2. What’s one thing on your calendar this week you’d mark a clear minus? Something you do because you’ve always done it, not because you love it, that you could hand to someone else or simply stop doing?
  3. What’s one thing you’d mark a clear plus? That thing that makes you feel the most like yourself while doing it… and could you protect that on your calendar the way you’d protect a client meeting?

Mentioned in this Episode:

  • The Growth Network — the HerBusiness community for women business owners ready to do business by their own rules
  • Full episode summary and resources – Episode 379 Show Notes
  • @herbusiness on Instagram and Facebook
  • Learn more about HerBusiness Podcast listener Kelly White, founder of The Skin Retreat by Oak & Sage. Oak & Sage offers beauty and skin treatments, plus monthly membership packages tailored to address a variety of skin concerns.

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About the host

Suzi Dafnis

Hi there. I’m Suzi Dafnis, CEO at HerBusiness. My BIG passion is helping women business owners to grow and scale their business, so that they can create their ideal lifestyle and make a difference in the world. Every day I am inspired by the more than 30,000 amazing women (and men!) in our community and I love finding the best education, mentors, and resources from around the globe, to help them get the skills, knowledge, and support they need to succeed. It’s been my privilege to lead HerBusiness (formerly The Australian Businesswomen’s Network) for the past 23 years (two+ decades – WOW!) because, whilst I’ve enjoyed success in business, I’ve also experienced the highs and the lows – sometimes you can feel on top of the world and in control and other times you can feel isolated, exhausted and stuck. What has made the biggest difference for me has always been having great people around me and having a lifelong commitment to learning. That’s why I am so passionate about the work we do here at HerBusiness – providing a Connection Network for women in business to get the mentors, contacts, referrals, knowledge, and skills they need to grow their confidence, make more money, build their businesses, expand their network and create the lives they love. My entrepreneurial journey started in the spare room of my Sydney apartment in 1994 when my business partner and I started a boutique events company that represented speakers and authors from the USA, here in Australia. Over the years I’ve grown multiple multi-million dollar businesses in the events, publishing and education niches – with teams in Australia, New Zealand, and the USA. Not everything has worked and there has been a degree of trial and error, and a lot of bumps in the road. But I have always had a strong commitment to always surrounding myself with great mentors and like-minded peers – a Connection Network that I can depend on and who can depend on me to be there for them too. I truly do what I love, every day.  

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