I just spent four or five episodes teaching you my strategic planning framework... and then one article showed me what it was missing. Today I'm getting honest about the strategic planning mistakes I made for years as a women business owner, and what I'm changing now.

I once paid a social media manager a lot of money and never had a single client tell me they found us on Instagram, so this year we shifted that budget somewhere I can actually track every conversion. I'm wrapping up my four-part strategic planning series with the marketing section, including why anonymous surveys are the only way to get the honest truth from your clients.

When I hired the right administrative team a little over a year ago, I did the math and realized we now have the capacity to grow to two and a half million dollars in revenue before we'd need to hire again. I'm walking through the operations section of my strategic planning process, the part that determines whether your business can grow without you working more hours.

Only 1.9% of women ever grow their business to seven figures, and if that's your goal, this episode is about making sure the money side of your business can actually get you there. I'm walking through the finances section of my strategic planning process, including the living wage question most service-based business owners are afraid to ask themselves.

I built my very first business planning workbook back in 2022, and I still use a version of it every single year to run my own business. Today I'm walking through the mindset section of my strategic planning template, plus giving you the whole thing for free, no email required.

Nobody checks your work when you're the owner of the business, and that freedom is exactly what makes most of us secretly ineffective. Today I'm walking you through the quarterly operations report that has completely changed how I run my business and hold myself accountable as a CEO. I break down all seven sections we cover in our two-hour quarterly meeting, from staff capacity to marketing spend to what I call our quarterly "rocks", the three to five priorities that actually move the needle each quarter. I'm also giving you the free template we use (no email opt-in required!), so you can copy this system into your own service-based health or wellness business. If you've ever ended a quarter wondering where the time went, this episode gives you the structure to fix that.

If you feel like everyone else running a business at your level has it together except you, I want you to hear this today... nobody does. I share why overwhelm at six, seven, and eight figures is not a sign you're doing something wrong, and why finding other women at your level is the thing that has helped me most.

A friend telling me about a networking event she went to gave me a lightbulb moment about why I've felt zero motivation to put myself out there while living somewhere I never planned to stay. I'm breaking down why most women at our level don't have a marketing strategy problem, we have a visibility problem, plus the three specific things I'm doing this week to fix it.

I'm recording this episode with my house full of moving boxes, less than 72 hours before a cross-country move I didn't expect to make this fast. That chaos is exactly what pushed me to make a real decision about the future of Well Women Business... I'm dropping the idea of "coaching programs" and focusing this brand on one thing: worldwide in-person women's business retreats.

I just got back from an eight-day service trip to Costa Rica and came home to boxes everywhere in my house as we're packing for a cross-country move, and somehow I still expected my marketing to be together. I'm getting honest about struggling to put my face on my own marketing, even after 11 years of running a profitable business, and the three things I'm holding myself accountable to this week to get back on track.

I spent $5,000 last year on a hire that gave me almost nothing back, and I didn't catch it until the money was already gone. Today I'm breaking down how to give every single dollar in your business a job. I walk through why measuring ROI is so much messier for a service-based business owner than it is in a product business, the three places I'm now tracking return in my own business, and the exact question to ask before you spend another dollar. If you know roughly what you're spending but have no real idea what it's producing, this episode gives you a place to start.

One website visit gave me the feelings of jealousy that inspired building this podcast and Well Women Business. I'm getting honest today about the emotion most of us pretend we don't feel... jealousy over another woman's success. I tell you exactly what I saw on that stranger's website that planted the seed for my Costa Rica retreat, why I disagree with the online guru who says you should never feel jealous, and the four-step process I use to turn jealousy into real data about what I want as a woman CEO. If comparison has ever hit you like a gut punch while you're scaling your own health or wellness business, this one is for you.

I have 40+ people in my business, and I can tell you exactly what every single one of their jobs is supposed to look like... not from memory, but from a one-page document we've been using for eight years. It's called a 5R Work Plan, and in this episode I'm walking you through exactly how we use it in my business and how you can build one for your own team this week in under 30 minutes.

I was at a wellness retreat when a total stranger called me out in front of a group of people I'd known for 48 hours, and I just sat there. I cried. I apologized publicly. And then I spent the next day dialed way back, barely talking, trying to disappear into the background... which, if you know me, is not me. In this episode I'm sharing the full story, what went wrong on the facilitation side, and the four lessons I walked away with about what it means to run a group program responsibly AND what it means to receive coaching without handing over your brain at the door. You’ll learn 4 lessons you can apply to any group program, whether you’re facilitating or participating.

I sat next to a woman at a conference lunch who had built a $22 million therapy practice and was weeks away from selling it. She was 50. And she wasn’t celebrating any of it. That conversation changed how I think about what I’m building — and why.

I had a CFO for years... and I was still doing the business budgeting myself. When I finally handed it off, the relief was immediate. In this episode I talk about zone of genius — what it actually is, how to find yours, and the three signs you’re already working outside of it.

In 2021 I spent $24,000 — a full quarter of my revenue at the time — on a program to automate my online course enrollment. I ran it for a year, tore the whole thing down, and walked away with four lessons I wish someone had told me before I paid for that program.

A few weeks ago I admitted something out loud in an executive team meeting that I’d never fully owned before — that I have been leading my business from fear for years, disguised as kindness. In this episode I get into what fear-based leadership actually looks like and what leading from love really means.