The 4 Biggest Mistakes Keeping Your Growth Unpredictable

[00:00:00] Are you ready to grow? From solopreneur to CEO? You're in the right place. I'm your host Rachel Cook, and I've spent the last decade helping women entrepreneurs start and scale service-based businesses. If you're serious about building a sustainable business, it's time to put the strategy, systems and support in place to make it happen.
Join me each week for candid conversations about stepping into your role as CEO, the hard lessons learned along the way. And practical, profitable strategies to grow a sustainable business without the hustle and burnout.
Do you know where your next 10 clients are coming from? Not do you know their names right this moment, but do you know where they're coming from? Do you know? What marketing channels are, how the majority of your clients are finding you and learning about you, and eventually wanting to pay you and work with you.
I find that most small business owners do not know the answer to this question, and they're struggling with their marketing, not because they're not doing enough. They're probably doing way more than they have to. They're struggling because the effort. The time and energy and attention that they're putting into their marketing, it isn't aligned and they're not clear on what actually works on where their next clients are coming from.
And that is what makes growth feel random instead of predictable. And what makes our business feel stressful instead of sustainable. So today, let's get into the biggest mistakes that are keeping your growth and your business. Stuck in that unpredictable pattern.
Hey there, CEO, Rachel Cook here, founder of the CEO Collective and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast. And yes, we kicked off this episode asking you where are your next 10 clients coming from? And, and this is one of my favorite questions to ask because it really tells me a lot about how well.
Someone understands what is happening in their business, and it's really, really easy to get caught up in doing these activities, these marketing activities, these growth activities, and get so in the weeds of the to-do list that we don't step back and really ask ourself, okay, is this actually working? Is this predictably working?
Is this. Bringing me the clients that I need in order to achieve my goals, to take care of myself and my family, and to continue to grow this business without really questioning things we'll never know. And it's the questioning that will get us closer to understanding what actually does work for us. So in this episode, I want to go through some of the biggest mistakes I'm seeing when I am.
Doing a strategy review with someone, and I do these all the time. Every client who comes into the CEO collective gets a strategy review with me. And the reason I love it is because it's like I get to pop the hood in their business and really take a look in at the engine and see if the engine's working, if it's functioning, or if it's, you know, a little messy in there and things aren't connected the way they're supposed to be.
So we're gonna talk about these big mistakes that are way too common. The first is confusing. Nurture with attract, confusing nurture Marketing. With attract marketing is a big one, and when I say nurture and attract, nurture is getting in front of people who already know who you are. They already follow you.
They already know your name. They already know your face. They already know what you do, what your business is about. So these are people who already know you. And that's a big difference from Attract, which is people who do not know you yet. This attract is the very first impression, the very first time they're meeting you, the very first time they're hearing about you, and the work that you do and the business that you have, and how you help people.
And the reason this is so important is because if you're confused between the two, then you're always talking. To the same people. You're always talking to the same people. And the reality is, with every single business, we are going to see that only a small percentage of the people we're talking to will sign up and work with us.
Right? Not everybody who hears about your business is gonna work with you, period. Like a small percentage of people in your community that are in your network that [00:05:00] are. Following you on social media that are on your email list, that are, you know, watching or reading or listening to your content, only a small percentage of them are actually going to work with you at some point.
And the other thing we have to know is that over time there is going to be attrition, meaning that group is going to get gradually smaller and smaller as people stop following. As people unsubscribe, as people move on, as they enter a different stage and no longer need what you have to offer. So if all we do is focus on nurture, talking to the people who already know who we are, and that group is getting smaller and smaller, and only a percentage of those people ever gonna work with us, and we don't replenish, we don't continue to get in front of new folks, then we are going to continue to struggle.
And in fact, your business will probably get smaller and smaller over time. So this is where I often see people getting stuck is because they think that they're being visible by showing up in their nurture Marketing and nurture marketing, again, goes out to people who already know you, who are already connected in some way, subscribed in some way hearing from you in some way.
So chances are your nurture marketing is maybe an email newsletter or an email list. Maybe your nurture marketing is people who are following you on social media platforms, on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, et cetera. So a lot of us get kind of caught here because we're showing up in these places pretty consistently.
Right. And I, I see this a lot of times, but it's not the same as growing your visibility 'cause you're talking to the same group again and again and again. And you'll start to notice this if you are getting engagement from folks. So you can see people are watching your story on Instagram or they're commenting on your post on Facebook, but you're not growing your reach, meaning you followers aren't growing, you're not getting in front of more people.
In fact, maybe it's staying the same. Maybe your newsletter list is. About the same size as it's been and you haven't seen a lot of people grow. Uh, a lot of people join it. Maybe you have some people join it, but at the same time, you're having unsubscribes. So if nothing changes here, if we're not getting in front of new folks, then the business is gonna stay the same.
And in fact, the results are gonna get fewer and fewer because at some point people naturally churn out. I. So we have to make sure we're getting some real new visibility, new eyeballs on our business, and understand that we need to do activities that attract new people into our business. That's a big one.
That's a huge part of our client growth engine framework, and we're gonna get into that even more in the next episode. But the big takeaway here is if all you're doing for visibility is talking to people who already know you and you're not getting in front of new folk. Then chances are we've gotta fix that pretty quickly here.
This leads me to the next mistake, which is not knowing the math behind your marketing system. And I know math isn't everybody's favorite subject, I promise we're not gonna get too nitty gritty into it in this particular episode, but you need to understand the math behind your systems and your strategy.
Because if you don't know how many people need to hear about an offer, then you're probably making decisions based on feelings instead of facts, instead of the figures and the numbers behind how it works. You might have heard from some people that marketing really is a numbers game, and I know it sounds very, you know, technical to say that, but it's true.
Like there is a lot of math that goes into building highly, highly strategic and sustainable systems. You need to know the numbers behind every choice that you're making in your business. So one number to consider. Just super basic, how many people need to see your offer before you get a sale? This could be what is your conversion rate on a sales call.
So how many people do you actually have to talk to in order to get one paying client? That's one number we should all know. If you're having sales calls or consult calls as the way you're inviting people to work with you, how many calls do you have to have? And then back it up [00:10:00] another one. How many people need to be invited to a call to book a call and show up for that call?
So we have to understand the numbers behind these things, and I find this is one of those pieces that can really be frustrating for a lot of people. But once they lock it in, it is such a game changer. So for my service based businesses, you have to understand how many people need to. Land on your page to book a consult call in order to get a consult call.
From the consult calls, how many people who booked actually showed up from the people who showed up who actually said yes. Once you have the numbers behind that, then you can actually forecast your growth and know exactly where you need to put your time and energy and attention in order to get more clients.
In fact, my clients have said to me over and over again that once they understand the numbers behind it, they can forecast their revenue within 10%, which is huge. Talk about making your business more sustainable when suddenly you know exactly which inputs lead to which outputs. And instead of guessing, am I getting in front of enough people, you actually know how many people you need to get in front of.
Even in my own business, knowing the math is a game changer. I don't do a ton of calls. I definitely will jump on a call if somebody's looking at something like, um, joining the CEO collective. But for our other programs, I know exactly how many people need to hear about an offer. How many people need to land on a sales page in order to know what it takes to get a sale?
And I can reverse engineer that. And know exactly what marketing activities I need to do and how many people total I need to get in front of. That is a game changer. That gives me so much peace of mind because now I'm not guessing at what needs to happen. I know what needs to happen. It also helps me understand what I need to do in order to grow.
The bottom line number. So knowing the math is really, really important. And this is something I work with my clients on quite a bit because it eliminates a lot of the questioning of what something is, if it's working or if it's not working right now, we can see with facts if it's working, if it's not working.
And even more important, I can see kind of like baseline. Where can we improve it? Because often there's areas where maybe it's kind of working, but we could definitely improve it. One area I see a lot with my clients is they'll get a lot of people on a call, like to book a call, but then they'll have a high sh uh, a high no-show rate or high cancellation rate, and that throws everything off.
So then we have to work on, well, how do we get people to stick and actually show up to the call? Or we'll get people who show up to the call, but a low conversion rate because they're not ready, they're not actually qualified to work with them or you know, they're disconnected from what the offer was going to be.
So it's like, okay, well we need to work on how do we improve conversion rate. We have to give them some more education, and how do we make sure the right people are signing up for these calls? So understanding the math, oh my gosh, it's a game changer. It lets you know exactly what is and isn't working. It lets you know exactly where you can improve, and it quickly allows you to know where you need to put more time on the inputs in order to get the outputs you want.
Okay. The third big mistake I see from small business owners is they're passively selling things. And this is one that I have to call people out quite a bit. I know for a lot of women we're really uncomfortable with, um, but we're really hurting ourselves when we don't make it explicitly clear how people can take the next step.
So what I often see for people who are passively selling one is they're just not selling enough. You know, I'll ask them, when was the last time you made a direct offer to your audience, to your community? You actually sent an email and said, Hey, I have this available right now. Or you shared on social media wherever people are gathering for you, where you said, Hey, this is available.
Come get it. Now I have space. Come work with me now I have a spot in my calendar for our next client. Come work with me now. And I'll often hear from people and they're like, wow, I don't know when. The last time I did that was. And if we start going backwards, it's like, okay, maybe it's been a few months or more than a few months.
So when you're not proactively making invitations, you're hoping that your potential clients are just gonna know you have a note, another spot available, that you have time in your calendar to take [00:15:00] on a new client, or that people just know how to work with you or how to buy that product, program, or service.
And the reality is people don't just know, like you can't put the burden on your potential clients to figure out how to work with you, and the more burden you put on them, I can guarantee the less people than you could actually have working with you. Very few of them are actually taking that initiative to figure it out.
Even for me, when I'm very much a proactive seller, every single month I proactively have something. That I'm talking about for people to buy. But even then, sometimes I'll put an offer out and people are like, oh, I didn't even know you did that. For example, in the fall, um, I opened up a few spots for some, uh, one-on-one CEO strategy, intensivess, and there's a link on my website and there's a sales page.
There's an automated calendar. Booking system in place, so it's there, right? If people were learning about me or thinking about wanting to work with me, they can go find it, but it wasn't until I sent dedicated emails to say, Hey, I've got spots for three, one-on-one CEO strategy, intensivess, that people actually booked.
So we can't just hope that people know. Or that they remember what we do. Um, you have to be proactive. You can't just hide and hope that your potential client is gonna pop out of the woodwork. You've got to invite people. 'cause even if they've looked at every page on your website, they're gonna forget all, you know, the different ways you work with them.
Or maybe there's an offer you don't sell very much. Like my one-on-one CEO strategy intensive. I don't talk about it maybe once or twice a year. Um, so I can't just hope that people know that I have that available. I have to tell them and proactively tell them with dedicated invitations. And this is the other part about, um, hiding offers or not proactively selling offers is that I'll often see people are kind of hiding.
The invitations, instead of sending a dedicated email about the product, program, or service they're trying to sell, it'll get buried somewhere in the bottom of a PS in their newsletter, or it'll get buried in the bottom of a caption of a social media post. And again, they're assuming that their potential client is going to catch it if you're hiding your offers and burying them in the bottom of a newsletter with a ps.
You are missing out on so many great clients who would work with you. You have to have dedicated, dedicated invitations, not just burying things in a PS and not only dedicated invitations, but you need to extend that invitation a few times. I think this is the other part about passive selling that a lot of people are uncomfortable with is that.
You know, we don't wanna be annoying, we don't wanna bother anybody, but you have to shift your mindset around that people are in your world following you on social media or listening to you, um, in your content or reading your newsletters because they want to hear from you because there's something you're sharing that's valuable to them and it's helpful to them.
And if you aren't making it explicitly clear what you have to offer. And you're not telling them about it enough, they're gonna miss it. So you probably need to talk about it a lot more than you think you do, and know that our audience is not watching us as closely as we all think they are. Right. I think this is a, a normal feeling.
I think about my kids sometimes. Um, you know, I've got all these teenagers now and they're very self-conscious all the time. They don't wanna be embarrassed. They don't wanna do anything wrong. They think everybody is watching them and everybody's looking at them. But if you're a mom or if you were a teenager at some point, you remember that feeling.
Um, but as a mom, I'm like, honey, no one's thinking about you that much. Nobody's paying that much attention. Like chances are they, they didn't even notice. And we have to remember, that's just human nature. We all think that people are paying so much attention to us, and maybe there are a few people who like.
Watch every single thing you do, but the majority of your audience is not. The majority of your audience is not just look at, you know, look at how many people open your newsletter. If you're getting like a 25% open rate, that means 75% of the people on your email list did not see it, so you gotta send it again, right?
You gotta make sure the other 75% hear about what [00:20:00] you have to offer. Same with any other type of content. I know there are so many more people that follow me on all these different, you know, whether it's my podcast or subscribed or my newsletter or my social media or these different channels, they don't see every single thing I share.
So if I'm only sharing once, and even worse, if I'm only burying it in the bottom of it and a PS, then I am doing myself a disservice. I am hiding something. That will help them. I am hiding the opportunity for them to get the support they're looking for. So be more proactive and know that you are doing a service when you're telling people about how to work with you.
If they were not interested, they would not be following you. They would not be subscribed, right? And they're free to unfollow and unsubscribe at any point if they no longer need what you have to offer. Let them unsubscribe. Let them unfollow, but don't hold back from those who are ready to take the next step because you're worried about being annoying.
Like tell people how you can help. Be explicitly clear. Make the invitation, and make it more than once. Okay, the fourth mistake is doing more instead of deciding better. Are doing more instead of deciding better, and this is, I think, kind of the default for a lot of us is we get so caught up in the shoulds and all of the noise out there, and so things aren't working the way that we want.
Things are unpredictable and we're feeling a little nervous about our business. We're feeling like, oh no, I'm in that feast of famine again. Or, oh no, I need to bring some new clients in. And instead of taking a step back and looking at the big picture and really thinking about what is the most strategic way, what is the simplest way, what is the most aligned way for me to get the result, which is for all of us to get a paying client.
Then we start hearing about all the other things we could do instead, and, oh, well, maybe I should jump on this platform. Now I hear this is really taking off. Maybe I should just increase how much content I'm putting out there. Maybe I'm just not being visible enough on the social media platform I'm on.
Right? Um, and like I said, it, it just leads to the same results. It just leads to the same results where instead of making everything work together more cohesively and more strategically, we're actually fracturing our attention. We're probably diluting. Our efforts way too much. And because we are in this high volume mode, we end up getting exhausted, right?
We end up with decision fatigue. We end up getting worn out from it and burnt out from it. And the decision fatigue really creates this paralysis that I hear from so many people because their marketing to-do list just gets to this point. Okay. Because there's no real system or strategy underneath it where they're like, oh my God, I don't know what else to say about this.
I don't know what to talk about. I don't know what to post. I don't know what to share. I don't know what to do. And so nothing happens, right? So we need to actually do a little bit less. It doesn't mean we have to stop doing marketing. Don't get me wrong. We have to do marketing, but we have to. Take that step back, get out of the weeds, stop adding to this to-do list of busy work.
And we have to get more intentional. We have to get more strategic, we have to decide better and really figure out what works for our business. So what I want you to take away from this is predictability in your business, knowing where those next 10 clients are coming from. It comes from understanding the strategy and system that you have in place from understanding how people go from a potential client to a paying client.
Understanding the journey that they go through and making sure that all the decisions you're making for your business are aligned with that journey that you've removed the friction that you've made it as easy as possible for them. To understand not just who you are, what you do, how you can help, but for them to understand what's the next step and how does this work and how am I sure this is the right fit for me?
It's all about understanding how your clients move through that [00:25:00] process. And if you're not sure how clients are moving through that process, you don't know where your next 10 clients are coming from, and if you don't know where your next 10 clients are coming from. Then you certainly cannot predict within a 10% margin of error what your revenue's gonna be.
And if you can't predict what your revenue's gonna be, then growth is nearly impossible. None of that comes from adding more tactics. None of it comes from adding more to a list of marketing busy work. Okay. It only comes from taking that step back and from having the time and the energy to really get that clarity around what makes the most sense, what does and doesn't work, and mapping that process out, mapping that client journey out.
So unpredictable growth, unpredictable sales. It's not a motivation problem. It's a systems problem. It's a strategy problem. It's not having clarity around how it all works together. And when you don't have that clarity, you are always going to be on the struggle bus. So what I wanna hear from you, or I want you to ask yourself is which of those mistakes feels the most familiar to you?
Which of those mistakes, and I'll recap them again, one confusing nurture. With attract, you're just talking to the same people who already follow you, who are already subscribed, who already know who you are, but not getting in front of brand new, fresh faces so you're not getting in front of new folks.
And as a result, your community is always contracting over time. People unsubscribe from the newsletter list, they unfollow you on social. You get less and less sales or interested clients because you haven't been consistently bringing in those fresh faces. Is that a mistake that you have been making?
Mistake number two, not knowing the math, not understanding how many people need to see what it is that you have to offer, and then being able to reverse engineer from there. How many people do I need to get this in front of? In order to achieve your revenue goals, understanding the numbers will help you to forecast, meaning help you to make it more predictable.
It'll help you to troubleshoot. It will help you to see where you can improve the system and where you can remove the frictions in the system. Mistake number three, passive selling. Being passive versus proactive, not being explicitly clear how people can work with you. Burying the invitation in the bottom of a PS, or hoping that people are gonna remember that one link on your website and that you have that offer.
And then mistake number four, doing more instead of deciding better when you get overwhelmed or stressed about the cash flow, about revenue in your business. Instead of pausing and getting more strategic, you start adding more things to do, which just contributes to this exhaustion and this hamster wheel of marketing busy work.
So what mistakes feel the most familiar to you, and what decisions have you been avoiding making? How will this help you to make smarter decisions moving forward? So all of this is what I teach inside of client growth engine. Client growth engine is not a set of tactics. It is not a marketing to-do list, and it is certainly not about to give you a million things that you need to do that are just gonna keep you busy, but not lead to results.
This is a strategic framework to align your marketing, your sales, and your delivery with your business. With your client journey and with what actually works for you as a highly relational, high trust, more boutique business owner. Because if you're here, chances are you're not trying to be an influencer or a content creator.
You're not trying to, you know, and you don't need to reach millions of people. You just need a more strategic approach to get you in front of the right people so that growth stops feeling like guesswork. I'm gonna walk you through that entire framework in the next [00:30:00] episode. This is the first system, the first piece of the puzzle that we work on with every single one of my clients at the CEO Collective.
It's one of the first things that I'm analyzing. Because without this, you're always gonna be working harder. Without it, you're always gonna be burning out and wishing you could take a break. But because you don't have this clarity, everything comes to a grinding halt. We don't want that anymore. So in the next episode, we are going to talk about building out your client growth engine and how to have a more cohesive strategy.
If you like this episode, please make sure you like and you share it, and you come over to Instagram at Rachel dot Cook and let me know your ahas or your insights. I wanna hear from you. I'm really excited to continue having these conversations about how to uncomplicate things for your business. So I will see you in the next episode.