Uncomplicate Your Business

As a business growth strategist for over 15 years, I’ve constantly heard and seen something that grates on my nerves. So many so-called experts always hype up the latest tools and tactics that grow your business by some measly amount every year.  But why only settle for five or ten percent annual growth when you can double it instead? You don’t have to, which is why in this episode I reveal my three key strategies to help you rapidly grow your business (doubling or even tripling your revenue) with half the effort. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 4:35 - I dive into the first strategy right off the bat. You can do it quickly, without engaging in more marketing or attracting extra sales. 9:31 - What’s the most common concern I often hear when I advocate my first strategy? One of my clients recently went through this. 13:55 - I discuss one final key thing to think about when it comes to strategy #1. Women entrepreneurs especially need to pay attention to this! 18:00 - Key strategy #2 involves increasi

If you’re anything like me, there comes the point in your business where your business needs to step up to support you and support your family if you’re going to stick with it. We all got through those startup stages of our business where we knew it was going to take awhile to figure things out and to get people in the door. Once you get a little bit further along on your journey and you’re ready to make this your full-time focus, you need your business to pay you a real paycheck. No one loves to run a business that can’t support the entrepreneur running it. This is why it’s so, so important to have a game plan for how you’re going to design that predictably profitable business. But the statistics show us that most women do not have a predictably profitable business. Over 75% of women entrepreneurs do not earn more than $50,000 a year. And most entrepreneurs shut the doors within the first couple of years. If you are committed to making your business truly work for you and work for your family, you have to ha

Not long ago, I was a guest coach for a business workshop where everyone was working on a poster-size post-it to map out our business for the next 12 months. There were directions to map out your business goals, your offers, and your marketing strategy. I started looking around the room to see where people needed help and I realized everybody in the room had a leaky business. Their marketing plan was not working together. Everyone’s marketing plan was a smattering of tactics… but there was no clear strategy to ensure that all that marketing effort was leading potential clients to their paid offers. The minute I shared with them a different way to approach their marketing strategy, all the light bulbs went off as people could see why all the work they had put into marketing their business wasn’t generating real results. Most people when they sit down and write out a marketing plan, they make a list of marketing to-dos. They need to have a newsletter and they need to blog… they need to do a podcast and they nee

Statistically, 80% of new businesses are going to fail within the first few years… so how do you make sure that you’re going to beat the odds and succeed? How do you make sure your business is going to stick it out through the startup stages to get to the success stage where you’re finally making consistent revenue? It comes down to FOCUS. In this episode, I’m going to share how you can get more focused so you can achieve your business goals. It’s all about simplifying your business strategy. https://rachealcook.com/predictably-profitable-business/

In this episode, we're focusing on the #1 strategy to ensure that you get paid each and every month in your business… even when you need to take a break from your business. Have you ever found yourself with a family emergency, something that needed your immediate attention, and suddenly, you had no choice but to completely rearrange your calendar? Or maybe you just want to enjoy a fun vacation without worrying about your inbox or your clients. You love the idea of being able to take a week or two off throughout the year in your business, but the same problem exists::?If you’re not working, you’re not getting paid. I know that this is something that’s incredibly common, especially for those of you who are heart-centered service providers. Maybe you’re a teacher or a coach or a trainer and you’re probably running your business by working one on one with clients offering services. While that is a fantastic first step to get your business going, it can also create a bottleneck in your business where, again,

In my conversations with women, I’ve discovered that we just don’t ask for or seek enough help. We feel like we have to do everything ourselves, and this leaves us feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and on the brink of burnout. In this episode, I talk about building your own support system. I take you behind the scenes and share how I’ve built teams to help me in various areas of my business and my life. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 4:03 - When building your own support system, you can focus on several areas. I start with discussing the different ways I receive support in my business. 8:29 - Doing this used to take up a HUGE amount of my time. I talk about it and how my Director of Operations, customer support team, and program coordinator are life savers! 14:42 - I have more people behind the scenes I’m in contact with to occasionally help me on the business side of things. 17:09 - My personal success team at home helps me manage my health. This area is one where a lot of women entrepreneurs stil

A lot of us entrepreneurs have seen (and heard) from our parents and others that success requires a lot of hard work and long hours. I used to be frustrated with the whole “work smarter, not harder” concept because I saw my entrepreneurial parents embrace the hustle. I thought to gain success you had to do anything and everything and work 80-100 hour weeks. But you eventually reach a point where you just can’t work any harder! So how do you get to that next level of success? Working harder for it clearly isn’t the answer. You need to shift the way you think about your relationship with work. So in today’s episode, I talk about six lessons that will have you working smarter instead. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 3:48 - When you do this, you get an exponentially higher return on your time and energy. So what’s lesson #1 and how have I practiced it in my business? 7:12 - What does the E in CEO not stand for? I learned this lesson the hard way! 11:46 - You’ve probably heard this phrase before, and t

We've all heard that it costs money to make money, right? Do you remember the first big investment you made into your business? I do... and it was SCARY. I remember being nervous, excited, and a little nauseous as I wrote the first check to join my first mastermind for $10,000. At the time, I was coming off a nearly year-long maternity leave with my twins. We'd made ends meet with Jameson's teaching salary and a couple of clients I was working with on the side... but reality was hitting us that I needed to dramatically ramp up my business to support my family. Investing $10,000 into my business seemed like a huge stretch for us. But as Jameson and I talked about the vision I had for this business - one that would allow me to support our family while working from home - we knew that it was time to commit 100% and go all in. That decision to?commit?made all the difference. It instantly shifted my mindset from?"How am I going to afford this mastermind? How can I handle this added expense to m

Are your mornings just the craziest time of the day? Between dealing with pets, coffee, and kids, you ultimately feel frazzled by the time you sit down at your desk. Or perhaps at the end of your day, you’re just exhausted and collapsing into bed. Well, high-performance CEOs and leaders know they need to manage their day well and conserve their energy and brain space for what really matters to get the results they desire in life, health, relationships, and business. So today, we’re going to talk about how you can run your day like a high-performance CEO. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 6:06 - A great day truly starts the night before. I’ve never been a great sleeper and even failed at it according to my FitBit app, so here’s how I fixed that. 15:48 - Morning routines all about personal preference. I discuss what the introvert in me thrives on. 19:58 - Pay attention to anything causing frustration in your day. What used to annoy me and how I solved it. 22:58 - Simplifying decision-making. I describ

Running your business like a CEO requires strategy and planning. It also requires skillfully managing your time and energy every week as a CEO so that you’re putting your attention on the tasks that’ll actually move your business forward. However, this is an area where we often get stuck. The email inbox, administration work, and ongoing busy work daily in our business can become a distraction. Then at the end of the week, we realize we haven’t made progress on those high-priority tasks that will truly move your business forward. In this episode, we’re talking about how you can run your week like a CEO and make those higher-value tasks a priority. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 4:33 - My model calendar approach. It’s essentially time blocking specific types of tasks, but here are the details of how I do it. 16:56 - Your CEO date. This is the time on your calendar when you’re checking in with your business. 26:49 - Asking yourself where you need support and self-care this week. Why did I include i

You’ve probably heard of my weekly CEO date if you’ve been following me for a while now. This is where I sit down to check in on my business to make sure we’re continuing to progress towards all the goals we’ve set. But I have another CEO date every single month. This series is all about what you’re doing on an ongoing basis to ensure you aren’t only creating business plans but also following through on them and adapting as circumstances arise. So I’m diving deep today and discussing how to build in self-accountability so that your plan isn’t just another Google document you’ll never look at again. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 2:37 - My monthly CEO date falls on the first Monday of each month. Diving into my check-in process. 5:59 - The importance of a planner to look back and review. This way, you see patterns before a big emergency crops up. 8:50 - Reviewing last month’s metrics and revenue. It keeps my finger on the pulse and helps me decide my goal for the next month. 12:08 - Actively or pa

Every new year feels like a fresh start and a new chance to go after those big, audacious goals for our lives and businesses. But if this year has taught us anything, it’s that our plans need adaptability. We need to build this adaptability into our entire business and allow it flexibility while still getting the results we want. That’s why I love running my quarter through 90-day plans. Today, I talk about how to actually dig in and start creating these plans for your own business. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 3:14 - Why 90-day plans? Entrepreneurs love setting big, ambitious goals but it can be overwhelming. 8:40 - Breaking big goals into more manageable chunks to fit the time, energy, and resources you have. You can make your best guess, or do this instead. 12:08 - What do you need to think about as you’re creating your first 90-day plan? I walk you through my process. 14:32 - Starting the process by looking over your sales and marketing. I go over my 5-part marketing strategy. 19:31 - This

You hear a lot of terrible advice online these days that causes people to focus on scaling at all costs. All of that effort only leads to your business blowing up. Things break and go awry, and you’re constantly putting out fires, feeling overwhelmed and stressed at the cash-eating monster you’ve created. So let’s forgo this unsustainable approach to growth and do something different. Avoid the three biggest things I see causing problems with business scaling. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 3:58 - The first mistake I see entrepreneurs make and how you can get yourself into this situation. No matter how much money you bring in, you feel like you can never get ahead. 6:33 - When do expensive, robust systems make sense to purchase and use in your business? Technology audits and figuring out where you’re unnecessarily spending money right now. 9:50 - Female entrepreneurs are especially susceptible to this mistake. Trying to do it all yourself vs. paying everyone but yourself. 12:12 - These specific i

Is it really possible to double, triple, or 10x your business in just a year? Or to take your business from 100k to $1,000,000 in revenue within just 36 months? If you listen to all the noise online, scaling seems like the name of the game and what we all should be focused on. But the honest truth is scaling for the sake of it can be detrimental to your business. So in this series, we’re talking about the truth of scaling your business. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 2:44 - The difference between growth and scale. While the terms are used interchangeably, they’re not the same thing at all. 6:25 - Entrepreneurs focusing just on scaling sales and not putting infrastructure in place create unstable and unsustainable businesses with irate customers and bad word-of-mouth. 9:25 - Emergency panic mode triggered by a large influx of customers creates chaos. Exhausting sales cycle leads to burnout with the type of massive, expensive launches you see online all the time. 15:15 - All the expenses going into

A couple of years ago, I received an invitation to a thank you party via email. That incredibly heartfelt invitation gave me the best feeling and became the catalyst for a friendship and business contact. In this Thanksgiving Day episode, the woman behind that email, Shannon Siriano Greenwood, is back on the show. She and I talk about how gratitude can have a huge impact on and should be the driving force behind your business. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 4:23 - I read the entire email from Shannon that caused me, a super introvert, to dress up and attend a restaurant downtown. 8:54 - Shannon discusses how she and I met. She calls it our own little love story. 14:53 - When did Shannon realize that bringing people together was her strength? She discusses why the realization didn’t come quickly. 20:25 - Shannon reveals a huge component of making connections and building relationships. It looks different from most people’s image of networking. 22:48 - What’s even better than a typical referral? Al

Are you like a hamster on a wheel when it comes to content creation? Do you feel pressured to release a newsletter, blog post, or social media posts week after week? Unfortunately, you’ve become a couch potato content creator--creating content that gets seen once, then gets archived and never sees the light of day again. Time in your business can be spent so much better than that! So in this episode, I’ve invited my friend and podcast producer Stacey Harris to discuss our anti-couch potato content creation approach and how to see your content as an asset to be used over and over in your business. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 6:25 - Stacey talks about podcast production and what her agency Uncommonly More does differently for podcasters. 11:24 - Is doing an interview-only podcast a good approach to take? Here’s why you might not want to do it like Dax Shepard. 12:54 - Shifting your content approach for client acquisition purposes doesn’t just apply to podcasting. You can do it elsewhere too. 14:

Tiktok taking off. Influencer marketing making a huge splash. Gurus advocating automation everywhere. AI technology that practically reads the minds of potential clients and customers (or so it seems) being a thing that exists. All of these marketing trends took the world by storm in 2021. But something about these kinds of marketing strategies doesn’t appeal or feel right to most entrepreneurs. So in this episode, I talk with marketing expert Beth Gebhard about why you need to be thinking more of the big picture when it comes to marketing and really bring the soul of your business forward in 2022. On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 3:34 - If there’s one thing you should take away from my conversation with Beth, it’s this. I’ve seen people succumb to this A LOT this year. 8:13 - Beth summarizes the twisting, winding road of her marketing and PR background. 13:29 - Marketing gets treated too often as an afterthought. Try this if you’re new or hesitant to plan out your marketing. 18:52 - What are some

Inconsistent marketing... feast or famine cycle... shiny object syndrome... all work and no play... these are all signs of a lack of effective business planning to keep you focused and in implementation mode, without the hustle and burnout. In this episode, I guide you towards taking all the insights you’ve gained from the last few days and turning them into your 12-month profit plan for 2022. Welcome to the last day of the Plan Your Best Year Ever challenge! On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 3:59 - Your 12-month profit plan today isn’t a day-to-day or week-to-week list of things to do. 5:29 - I reveal the 5-part marketing strategy this profit plan is built on and include some examples. 8:56 - How do you map out a big picture profit plan for your business in 2022? Here’s where I start. 9:41 - Do this first to make sure you burnout-proof your business. I offer some questions for you to consider. 11:24 - Start planning what you’re going to sell next year. I discuss how I figure out what my promotion c

Does this sound familiar? You write down a business goal and put it some place to remind you of it constantly. Then a few weeks or months down the line, that goal has gone missing, gotten thrown away, or is gathering dust on your desk or fridge or wherever you’ve placed it. And your business is as aimless as it’s ever been. With goal setting, too many people have a “set it and forget it” mindset. It’s time to try something new! In this episode, I dive into a different way of goal setting that’ll help you actually create the kind of milestones you’ll follow through on. Welcome to day four! On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 4:20 - You’ve made New Year’s resolutions, only to realize you’ve fallen off the wagon before January’s over. Why does goal setting fail so often? 5:52 - Let’s begin a new approach for setting goals. I share a tip I’ve given a lot of my clients when it comes to brainstorming potential goals. 9:23 - You’re going to have a lot written down after your brainstorming session. I discuss

Too many women entrepreneurs work crazy long hours trying to do everything themselves. And just when they feel like they’ve finally put out one fire, another one flares up soon after. But panic isn’t a business strategy, and you didn’t become an entrepreneur to stress yourself out. Imagine a 2022 that’s different, one without the hustle and burnout. Imagine running your business by design instead of default. When you do, things begin to run like clockwork. So in this episode, I dive into a strategic process for consciously designing a business that works for you instead of you for it. Welcome to day three! On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO: 3:33 - Why are we doing business design today after lifestyle design yesterday? It reflects one of The CEO Collective values. 5:33 - I discuss the first part of today’s exercise: looking at your personal definition of success. 7:46 - What’s your professional definition of success? 8:42 - Without getting clear on part two and being more discerning, your business be