Your Fun & Profitable Online Business · Episode 62
What Joy Does for Your Business
Joy is not a bonus you earn after the work is done. It changes how you think, how you show up, and how willing you are to stay engaged in the actions that actually grow your business.
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Joy changes how the business functions
Seven things joy makes easier
Joy is not the strategy by itself. It changes the state you bring to the strategy – and that affects what you notice, what you do, and whether you keep doing it long enough to create results.
Creativity
See possibilities and connect ideas.
Energy
Move with less internal negotiation.
Visibility
Show up more like yourself.
Connection
Create warmer, better conversations.
Consistency
Want to come back tomorrow.
Revenue
Stay engaged in revenue-producing actions.
Experimenting
Try, learn, and adjust with less overthinking.
It keeps you close enough to your business to make decisions, talk to people, follow up, make offers, test ideas, and keep going.
When business feels stuck, the instinct is often to think harder: make another plan, brainstorm longer, open more tabs, and try to figure out the perfect answer. But more thinking does not always create more clarity. Sometimes the state you are thinking from is part of the problem.
Forced business mode narrows your thinking
Under pressure, your brain looks for certainty. It tries to solve the problem quickly, avoid mistakes, and get the answer right. That can make your thinking narrower at exactly the moment you need to see more possibilities.
Forced business mode
More pressure → narrower thinking → more need for certainty → more overthinking → less movement.
A lighter state
More openness → more possibilities → easier connections → more willingness to try → useful movement.
Joy changes more than your mood
In the episode, Wendy walks through seven practical effects of joy. It can support creativity and motivation, help work feel less heavy, change the energy you bring to visibility, improve connection, make your days easier to return to, keep you engaged with your business, and reduce overthinking loops.
That matters because business growth depends on behaviors. Following up. Making offers. Testing ideas. Refining what works. Talking to people. Continuing to show up. Joy does not magically create revenue, but it can make it easier to stay in the game where revenue-producing opportunities happen.
Why joy supports consistency
When your days feel better, you are less likely to need constant recovery from your own business. You are building something you actually want to return to. That makes consistency less about forcing yourself to comply and more about creating a business that is sustainable enough to keep participating in.
This is the connection between joy and results that can be easy to miss. Strategy still matters. Sales still matter. Follow-through still matters. Joy helps support the state from which you do those things.
Joy can loosen the overthinking loop
A lighter state can make it easier to release the need to get everything exactly right. Instead of trying to guarantee the outcome, you can try something, see what happens, and adjust. That is the same experiment mindset Wendy has talked about throughout the podcast.
The goal is not to feel joyful every minute. It is to start noticing the relationship between how you feel and how your business functions, so you can make more intentional choices instead of automatically pushing harder.
Check your state this week
At some point during one workday, pause before trying to push through:
- Ask yourself: “What state am I in right now?”
- Get curious about whether that state is helping you move forward.
- If it is not, do not immediately push harder. Try shifting your state even slightly, then notice what changes.
Questions about joy and business growth
How can joy help a business grow?
Joy can support creativity, energy, visibility, connection, consistency, and a willingness to keep taking useful action. Those behaviors create more opportunities to learn, connect, sell, and improve.
Does joy actually create revenue?
Joy does not automatically make money. It can help you stay engaged in the activities that create revenue opportunities, such as following up, making offers, testing ideas, refining what works, and continuing to show up.
Why is it harder to think clearly when business feels heavy?
Pressure can make you focus on avoiding mistakes and finding certainty. That narrower state can make it harder to see possibilities, experiment, and take the next useful step.
Do I need to feel joyful all the time?
No. The point is not constant positivity. It is noticing your state and recognizing when pushing harder is making the work heavier instead of helping you move.
How can I bring more joy into my business?
Start by observing. Pause during a normal workday, notice the state you are in, and experiment with one small shift. The next episode in this series goes deeper into practical ways to create more joy intentionally.
Move one thing forward
Experience the shift at CEO Hour
CEO Hour is Wendy’s free weekly co-working session where you can take one thing you have been overthinking and give it focused, supportive time to move forward.
Read the full episode transcript
Episode 62 transcript: What Joy Does for Your Business
Why your state matters
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 62 of your fun and profitable online business. This is the podcast that helps you grow your business in a way that feels as good as it looks without forcing your way through it. I’m Wendy Muzzy, a certified money coach and online business strategist, and I help women entrepreneurs create fun and profitable online businesses using simple systems and intentional decisions. And today, we’re continuing this conversation on joy. Because in the last episode, we talked about something that might have felt a little unexpected. It’s that joy isn’t a distraction. It’s actually what shifts you out of that forced business mode that we talked about and into something that works better.
And today, I want to show you why it works. Because once you see what’s actually happening behind the scenes, this stops feeling like a nice idea and starts feeling like a strategy. All right, let’s get to it.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in business, you’ve probably tried to think your way out of it. This might be more planning or more brainstorming or more just trying to figure it out. And sometimes that works, it really does. But a lot of the time, it just leads to more thinking, like more tabs open on your browser. And it’s more ideas that don’t go anywhere.
If you’re honest with yourself, it can start to feel really frustrating because you’re not avoiding your business. You’re in it. You’re thinking about it. You care about it. But instead of feeling clearer, you might start to feel more tangled or more unsure, more like you’re circling the same few ideas without anything really landing.
That’s usually the moment where most people think they need to sit down and just really figure this out, right knuckle their way through it. But that’s the exact moment where your brain is the least equipped to actually do it. Your brain doesn’t work the same way under pressure as it does when it feels open and safe.
That’s when you’re in your forced business mode. Your brain is focused on solving a problem as quickly as possible. It narrows your thinking. It’s like putting those blinders on. You can’t see anything else around. It’s looking for certainty. And it tries to get it right. But that’s not the state where your best ideas come from. Your best ideas come from a different place. And this is where joy comes in.
Seven ways joy changes your business
Joy isn’t just a feeling. It’s a state. It’s a place that changes how your brain works. It changes how you show up and it changes how other people respond to you.
Number one, joy increases your creativity. When you feel joy, even in a small amount, your brain releases dopamine. And dopamine does a few really important things. It increases your motivation. It helps you make connections faster. And it helps make things easier. It helps you see possibilities easier. So instead of thinking in a straight line, I’m going to go straight from A to B, your brain starts connecting the dots. And this is why ideas show up better when you’re not trying. It’s because your brain is in a state where it can actually do it.
There’s another piece to this too. When your brain feels safe and positive, it shifts out of that threat-based place where it’s focused on avoiding mistakes. And it puts it in more of an expansive place where you’re open to possibilities. You’re no longer thinking what’s the right answer. You start thinking like, hey, what could work here? And that one shift alone changes everything. Because business isn’t about one perfect answer. It’s about trying things, adjusting, and moving forward.
Reason number two, joy keeps your energy high, and this helps you make things happen. Energy is what fuels your action. When your energy is low, everything feels harder than it should. Simple decisions take longer, tasks feel heavier, and you procrastinate more. But when your energy is high, you move faster, you follow through. You don’t sit there negotiating with yourself for 20 minutes before you have to do something. You just go and do it.
Number three, joy creates magnetism. When you’re enjoying what you’re doing, people can feel that. Your content feels different. Your conversations feel different. The presence you bring feels different. And people are naturally drawn to that. Not because you’re trying harder to be visible, but because you feel more like yourself.
You’ve probably experienced this before, where you see someone talking about their work, and you can tell they’re really enjoying it. They’re not overthinking every word. They’re not trying to sound a certain way. They’re just in it. And that makes you want to listen. It makes you want to lean in. That’s the magnetism I’m talking about. You don’t create that by trying harder. You create that by feeling more like yourself and what you’re doing.
Reason number four, joy improves engagement and connection. When you’re in a good state, you show up differently. You’re more conversational, you’re more open, you’re more willing to connect. And that leads to better conversations and more responses.
Reason number five, joy makes your days better. This might sound really simple, but it matters. Because when your days feel better, you want to show up again tomorrow and the next day, and you’re not constantly needing breaks from your business. You’re building something that actually fits into your life and that’s what creates consistency.
Reason number six, joy keeps you plugged into your business. When your business feels heavy, you disconnect, you avoid, you put things off, you stay in your head longer instead of taking action. Profit doesn’t come from thinking about your business. It comes from being in it, making decisions, trying new things, talking to people, following through. Joy is what keeps you engaged with all of those things to make it happen.
And this leads to revenue. This isn’t because joy just makes you money. It’s joy keeps you in the game. And when you’re in the game, you create opportunities to make money.
Joy supports strategy and revenue
People sometimes think, well, that’s really nice. That’s a great idea. That must be nice to feel joyful, but I still need to make money. But look at what actually drives your revenue. Following up with people, making offers, testing ideas, refining what’s working, continuing to show up. None of that happens consistently when you feel disconnected from your business.
So it’s not that joy replaces your strategy, it supports it. It keeps you close enough to your business, long enough to actually see the results from what you’re doing.
Reason number seven, joy reduces overthinking loops. When you’re in a lighter, joyful state, you’re less attached to getting everything perfect. You’re more willing to try something, see what happens, and adjust, which ties directly into the experiment mindset we’ve talked about before. And that’s where real progress happens.
Joy isn’t an extra thing. It’s not something you add when you have time. It’s something that directly impacts your ideas, energy, visibility, relationships, consistency, revenue. It changes how your business functions.
Once you see all of this, you start to notice it everywhere. You notice when things feel heavy and nothing is moving. You notice when you take a step away and come back clearer. You start to connect the dots between how you feel in how your business functions. And that awareness, that’s powerful because now you’re not guessing anymore. You’re paying attention to what actually works for you.
Your action step and CEO Hour
At some point during your workday, pick any workday over the next seven days, pause and ask yourself, what state am I in right now? And then get curious. See if it’s helping you to move forward. If the answer’s no, that’s your sign. You don’t need to push harder. You don’t need to like work and grip and make it happen. You just need to shift your state even slightly.
Joy isn’t something that you either have or don’t have. It’s not something you wait for. It’s actually a place that you can move into. And I’m going to walk you through how to actually bring more joy into your business in a way that’s simple, realistic, and repeatable.
Today, we talked about what joy is actually doing in your business, not as a bonus, not as something optional, but as something that impacts how you think, how you work, and how you show up.
And if you want a place to experience the shift in real time, CEO Hour is the perfect place to do it. It’s my free co-working session where you can take one thing that you’ve been overthinking and move it forward in a simple, supportive place. You don’t need more time. You just need a place to move things forward. And you can get all the details to make it happen at wendymuzzy.com/CEO. All right, until next time, Happy building your fun and profitable business with just a little more joy.