If you’ve been in business for a few years, you’ve probably noticed something. Numbers are down. Sales. Leads. Traffic. Everything.
There’s a lot of speculation as to why this is:
- Business models doing a course correction after the pandemic
- The economy
- Attention spans
- AI
- Market saturation
As logical as they might sound, these are all external forces that are out of your control. When diagnosing and fixing a broken business, the only real solution is internal—your own systems and processes.
You can’t control the economy, but you can make strategic improvements inside your business.
Finding and fixing the internal bottlenecks
A bottleneck is a limitation of some kind. If you think of your business as a pipeline, the bottleneck is a narrow spot that doesn’t allow enough leads or revenue to flow through.
In a coaching or course-based business, there are only two types of bottlenecks:
- Not enough capacity to fulfill the need
- Not enough need to fill the capacity
The first one is a supply problem, the second is a demand problem.
Coaches and course creators have a supply problem when their calendars are maxed out, they have no more room in their cohorts, and a waiting list of clients who want to work with them.
In other words, there is not enough supply of you to go around.
Assuming more revenue is your goal, here’s a two-second, guaranteed fix for a supply problem: raise your rates. That’s it. Done. You can stop reading now. Have a terrific day!
Still here? Ok.
The second (and much more common) problem isn’t one of supply, but of demand. There simply aren’t enough people booking time with you and filling your courses and cohorts. You don’t have a waiting list, because no one is lining up waiting for you to open the doors.
If that’s the case, why?
Why aren’t there more people demanding to learn from and work with you? It’s not because you’re not amazing (you are). It’s not because you don’t get results. It’s not even because your sales page sucks.
The real reason is that your upstream pipeline is clogged. There’s a bottleneck, but where?
The first place to look is the step preceding where the problem is. If the problem is sales of your high-ticket offer, ask:
Is the flow of customers/clients through your low-cost products and discovery calls suffering from a lack of supply or demand?
- Do you lack the capacity to book additional discovery calls?
- Is there a lack of people who want to book the calls?
If it’s a supply problem (not enough of you to go around) then the solution might be to outsource your discovery calls. There’s more nuance to it than that, and we can talk about qualified vs unqualified leads and how to effectively filter them out later, but few coaches have a supply problem. They have a demand problem.
There simply aren’t enough people lining up to talk to you or to buy your entry-level products.
Why?
Again, to get to the root cause, we have to look upstream, to the previous step in your leads process: your email list.
You have a pipeline filled with people who are attracted to your voice and your style and your personality. They follow you on social media, they watch your YouTube channel, they read your blog or your Substack or listen to your podcast.
You’ve invited all of those people to your mailing list. A portion of them have joined you there, but despite your best promotional efforts, you’re still not booking out your programs and courses.
Why?
One of two problems can cause a bottleneck in your email list:
- The wrong people are subscribing.
- Not enough people are subscribing.
The first problem—the wrong audience—is common if you’ve been in business for a few years. Maybe you’ve pivoted a time or two and your target market has changed, but you have subscribers who have been with you for years.
It’s also a common problem for people who built their list primarily through events like giveaways and bundles. Collaborations like that are great for getting a burst of subscribers, but they’re not always the right subscribers.
The second problem—not enough subscribers—is exactly what it says. While you don’t need a huge list to earn a great living online (4,500 people are receiving this email from me today), you do need a good flow of new subscribers.
Most businesses lack visibility
The fix for both of these problems are the same: be more visible to your ideal client. The more people who know what you do and who you work with, the more people who will subscribe to your mailing list.
In fact, if you think about it, this is the fix for almost every demand problem your business might be facing. If not enough people are buying your offer, getting in front of more of the right audience is a good place to start.
How can you be more visible? You have three options. We call them the “Three Bs.”
🐝 Build visibility organically through content and social media.
🐝 Borrow visibility through collaborations with your colleagues and competitors.
🐝 Buy visibility with paid ad spots.
If you’re not doing at least one of these and adding new people to your mailing list weekly as a result, then that is where you should focus your efforts.
Take back control of your future
If your business is struggling right now, you have two choices:
🙋🏻♀️ You can choose to optimize what’s within your control.
🤷🏻♀️ You can choose to blame the things that are outside your control.
Only one of them will actually fix what’s broken.
If you’d like personal, hands-on help diagnosing and fixing the broken systems in your business, come join me inside Six-Figure Systems. That’s all we do, and I’d love to work with you.
