Keep feeding the machine...
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Good Morning my friend! Happy Sunday! What's on your calendar this week? Anything exciting? I'm attending the Florida Small Business Development Center Summit on Monday and Tuesday. I've never attended anything with this organization, but I've heard great things and I'm excited to connect with more local business owners. Because reminder: not all business needs to come from social media! They're also hosting a "reverse" trade show where government agencies will be there and businesses can essentially go pitch themselves. I'm really excited to check that out, so stay tuned. The past several weeks have been SUPER busy over here. I've welcomed SEVEN new clients across the Focused Visionary Accelerator and my private 1:1 programs. I only have capacity for one more private client for the next couple of months, which feels freaking amazing, and FVA is filling up with the most ambitious, supportive group of business owners. (**Side note** If you've been thinking about working together or didn't realize I had 1:1 options and want to discuss, reply and let's chat about the options!) One of my favorite compliments I continue to hear is some version of, "I've had really bad experiences with group programs, so I was hesitant to join another one. But FVA is completely different. I've never been in a program run like this." I will never get tired of hearing that. BUT...just because business is busy and I'm reaching capacity in one of my offers does not mean I'm going to stop marketing. I just created a new six-part private audio series that I'm going to promote heavily on Threads for the next 30 days because I still need to feed the machine. And this is a conversation I'm having on repeat with clients right now. Business owners keep ghosting their marketing. Sometimes it's because they get busy with clients. Sometimes it's because they don't need clients right this second, so marketing suddenly doesn't feel urgent anymore. Sometimes they get bored. Sometimes something shiny catches their attention and they decide they should be doing that instead. And sometimes they're simply trying to do so many freaking things that eventually they can't keep up with any of them. They post on Instagram for a few weeks. Start networking. Decide they should be on LinkedIn. Send a few emails. Try Threads. Start talking about launching a podcast. Then something starts gaining traction...and somehow that's the exact moment they stop doing it. Three months later, the pipeline is quiet and they're wondering where all the leads went. So they start marketing again. That's the cycle I want you to break. Because marketing isn't something you turn on when you need clients and turn off when you don't. Marketing is how you make sure you don't get to the point where you're desperate for clients in the first place. You have to keep feeding the machine. You have to keep planting seeds so there are always people discovering you, getting to know you, entering your world, and moving through your pipeline at different stages. But here's the part I think we don't talk about enough. Your marketing has to be sustainable. If your marketing plan requires you to post on five platforms, send three emails a week, publish a podcast, attend two networking events, create YouTube videos, host a monthly workshop, engage for an hour every day AND actually run your business... You're probably going to stop. Because you created a marketing strategy you can't realistically maintain. This is where your data becomes incredibly important. Instead of asking, "What else should I be doing?" start asking, "What are the few things that are actually working?" For me, there are three marketing activities I protect. Threads. I've been consistently active there for about a year. I love the platform, I've built relationships there, and just last week I signed my first official "I found you on Threads" client. But don't miss that part: I've been there for a YEAR. I didn't show up for six weeks, decide it wasn't producing clients fast enough, and move on to something else. I stayed long enough to actually build momentum. Email marketing is another. The Sunday Morning Brew isn't going anywhere. It's relatively low lift for me, gives me a direct line to my audience, and consistently supports the rest of my pipeline. And then there's the podcast. That's a non-negotiable. It serves multiple purposes in my pipeline, allows me to share my best content, builds trust, and lets people really understand how I think before they ever work with me. Those are my three. Could I be doing more? Of course. There are approximately 4,782 ways I could market my business at any given moment. But more isn't the goal. Sustainable is. When business gets busy, those three continue. When I don't particularly feel like marketing, those three continue. When I have plenty of clients, those three continue. And when something shiny comes along and my entrepreneurial brain wants to completely change the plan...those three continue. Because consistency doesn't mean doing all the things all the time. It means knowing the few things that move the needle and continuing to do them long enough for the results to compound. So if your marketing feels exhausting right now, maybe you don't need another strategy. Maybe you need fewer of them. Pick the few things that work. Make them sustainable. Then stop starting over every time life, business, or your attention changes. Feed the machine. Even when you're busy. Even when your pipeline is full. And especially when something is finally starting to work. CEO Power Move of the Week: Create Your Marketing Minimums Look at your marketing over the last 6–12 months and identify the 2–3 activities that have actually produced results for you. Where have your leads, conversations, subscribers, referrals and clients actually come from? Then decide what your minimum sustainable cadence is for each one. Maybe it's one email a week, one networking event a month, three Threads posts a week, two podcast episodes a month, or five intentional relationship-building conversations a week. These become your marketing minimums. You can absolutely do more when you have the time, energy and capacity, but these are the things you commit to consistently. They're the activities you don't abandon because you got busy, your pipeline filled up, you got bored, or a shiny new marketing strategy caught your attention. And if you're thinking, "But Michelle, I don't actually know which activities are working or how people are moving through my pipeline..." — that's exactly the work we do inside FVA. We look at the facts, identify what's actually generating results, and build a crystal-clear pipeline so you know exactly what you're doing to fill it, nurture it and move people through it. Because sustainable marketing isn't about doing more. It's about knowing what works and doing it consistently. Tap In
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