Hey Reader,

A client came to me a while back because her calendar wasn’t full and her revenue was all over the place. She was putting in the hours, and she was frustrated.

One of the first things she wanted help with was her welcome book, the document every new client receives when they sign on. She’d been refining it for weeks. It was detailed, polished, and a lovely piece of work.

So I asked her when it goes out.

“After someone becomes a client.”

The thing she was pouring her best energy into only mattered once the problem she came to me with was already solved.

I see this all the time. When revenue stalls, we reach for the work that feels productive and safe: a new website, a new offer, a new hire, a better onboarding process. All of it can be useful eventually. If the real bottleneck sits untouched, though, you just get busier without getting anywhere.

The fix is to work in order. Most revenue problems break down in one of three places, and they run in sequence:

1. Visibility - Are the right people finding you?
2. Conversion - When they find you, are they saying yes?
3. Delivery - After they say yes, are they coming back and sending others your way?

Start at the top and fix the first broken link before you move to the next. A remarkable client experience won’t carry a business that not enough people know about. And a lot of what looks like a pricing problem turns out to be a visibility problem. When the wrong people are finding you, every price feels too high.

In this week’s episode of The Real Women Real Business Podcast, I walk through how to figure out which stage is yours, the questions to ask at each one, and the first question I ask myself when things slow down in my own business. (It usually points to something I stopped doing.)

​Listen Now: Ep 139 -Why More Marketing Will Not Fix a Broken Sales Process (or find it on your favorite podcast platform)

If you’d like a clearer picture without the guesswork, take the Accidental CEO Assessment. It’s free, takes about 10 minutes, and shows you where your business stands so you have one clear place to start: aboutshaunalynn.com/CEOquiz

Talk soon,

Shauna Lynn Simon — CEO, SLS Coaching (866) 661-6711

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PS Knowing which stage is broken is the first step. Staying focused on it when shinier projects come along is where most business owners need support. That’s what we work on together inside the Real Women Real Business Mastery Program, with a group of women building businesses the same way you are. Learn more here: RealWomenRealBusiness.com​