Author: EvieBurke

Black and white photo of hand writing 'plan' in notebook with planning materials around.

Wrong Offer. Wrong Audience. Wrong Timing. (Or Was It?)

by EvieBurke, posted in post
Black and white photo of hand writing 'plan' in notebook with planning materials around.

Wrong offer. Wrong audience. Wrong timing. Not enough emails.

When something doesn’t go as planned, it’s natural to look for where the strategy broke down. But sometimes the strategy was fine. It was the execution.

The tech that wasn’t set up until two days before (and not tested correctly). The emails that were written but not sent… or went out in the wrong order. The onboarding sequence that was still on the to-do list after onboarding should have been completed. The thing that broke and no one caught it, until a potential client mentioned it.

You can have the best strategy in the world, but if it’s not executed well, it’s a problem. Heck, a well-executed okay strategy will perform better than a poorly executed fabulous one every time.

Great news! It’s fixable. And it’s so much easier to fix by planning things out beforehand than during.

If you have something coming up in the next 60 days, now is the time to look at what’s actually running it and start getting things set up.

The Tool Doesn’t Matter as Much as the Plan

by EvieBurke, posted in post

Sometimes when I’m meeting a business owner for the first time they’ll ask me, “which email marketing platform do you recommend?”

I’ll usually ask what their plans are for it. Sometimes I get an answer. Sometimes I get a blank look followed by, “well, to email my future list.”

Okay, let’s back up.

I’m in the far western suburbs of Chicago (stay with me, I promise this will make sense). If I decide to go to Chicago, I can hop in my car and head east. I’ll probably get there. But which neighborhood? It’s helpful to have a destination and a plan. Technically, I can end up at O’Hare and be IN Chicago, but I’m not going to see Lake Michigan from there.

The tool doesn’t matter as much as the plan.

Before you pick a platform, map out what you actually need it to do. How are you building that list? Is there a funnel, a launch workflow, an onboarding sequence? What needs to happen first, second, third?

When you have the plan, things go faster, are easier to maintain, and you spend a lot less time fixing things that were set up wrong from the start.

What’s one thing you wish you’d mapped out before you started building?

Knowing What You Don’t Do

by EvieBurke, posted in post

Not every inquiry is the right fit. And being clear about that helps everyone.

A coach reached out to me recently. She had built a course and was looking for someone to create a marketing plan that would generate the sales she wanted.

That’s not what I do.

I’m not the person deciding what you should sell or how you should market it. I’m the person who comes in once the direction is clear and says: “Okay, how do we actually make this happen?”

I build the plan with the details and deadlines and execute on the tech and operations that make it real.

So I referred her to a couple of fractional CMOs I trust and wished her well.

Knowing what you don’t do is just as important as knowing what you do. It makes it easier for the right clients, and the right referral partners, to find you.

Where’s the line for you between what you handle and what you refer out?

It’s Okay If Handing Off Feels Weird

by EvieBurke, posted in post, support

You’re supposed to focus on your clients, your content, and your growth. The work only you can do, while someone else makes sure the back-end is running the way it should.

But for coaches and speakers who have been carrying their entire business in their heads, handing something off and actually not worrying about it might feel… weird.

It’s okay if it does. New paths feel like that sometimes.

Because on the other side of it is relief, confidence, and trust. It’s knowing that it’s handled and you’ll be kept in the loop.

If you’ve never had that in your business, it’s worth knowing it exists.

You Can’t Fit 8 Pounds in a 5 Pound Bag

by EvieBurke, posted in post, support

One of the hardest things to admit as you’re running a growing business is: the bottleneck is you.

You’re not doing anything wrong. You’re not bad at business.

You’re one person trying to run what you’ve built, but now it needs more than one person.

Because you’ve got the running list in your head that stays there, the back-end things that you’re always playing catch-up with, and things falling through the cracks.

This isn’t because you aren’t trying, it’s because you don’t have the capacity anymore.

You can’t fit 8 pounds of potatoes into a 5 pound bag without something falling out (or a seam splitting).

Working “harder” or getting up earlier can’t solve this problem.

It’s time to stop being the only person responsible for making everything work.

If you’re in this place, you’re not failing. You’re ready for the next step.