The learning center

Last week, I walked past a local café with a sign out front:

"World's best cup of coffee."

Bold claim. And one I had zero interest in investigating.

Even if every sip came with a personal epiphany, that sign would still get an eye-roll from everyone walking past—without breaking stride.

Why?

Because everyone says they're the best. Which means nobody believes anyone.

Your prospects have heard it all before:

• "Award-winning."
• "World-class service."
• "Industry leaders."

The moment you say it, you sound like everyone else. Without social proof, those words just blend into the noise.

But when you back up your claims with real social proof—the kind that shows other people have already found value in what you offer—you earn genuine trust. The kind that moves your marketing from getting eye-rolls to driving action.

Let me show you exactly how to build that social proof into everything you do.
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This article is adapted from a video where I break down how to engineer social proof into your marketing. You can watch the full walkthrough here.

Why Social Proof Is the Currency Business Runs On

I had a fascinating conversation with Simon Bowen, creator of the Genius Model, and he said something that stopped me cold:

"The currency of the purchase isn't trust. It's belief."

Think about that for a second.

You can trust someone completely—think they're a great person, reliable, honest—and still not believe they can solve your problem.

I can trust you're a great girl or guy. Doesn't mean I believe you can help me double my revenue.

That's the gap most businesses miss. They spend all their energy trying to be "trustworthy" when what customers actually need is social proof that you can deliver.

Social proof works because of a fundamental principle in human behavior: people look to the actions of others to guide their own decisions. When prospects see evidence that other people—people like them—have purchased your product or service and found real value, they assume the same will be true for them.

This isn't manipulation. It's basic psychology. People validate their actions by observing what others do, especially in situations where they're uncertain.

Belief requires evidence. And that evidence comes in three forms of social proof.

The Three Types of Social Proof Every Marketing Strategy Needs

If you want your marketing to be believable, you need to layer these three types of social proof throughout everything you do.

1. Internal Proof: Case Studies and Success Stories That Convert

Internal proof is the data you own. The metrics you track. The results you've delivered. These become your case studies and success stories.

Most businesses have this data—they just don't use it as social proof.

We've helped 10,000+ founders go from stuck to scaling. That's not a guess. That's tracked, verifiable data that backs up every strategy we teach. When someone asks, "Does this work?" we don't say "trust us." We point to real customer success stories.

Your internal social proof might be:

• Number of clients served
• Average results your customers get
• Years in business
• Case studies with specific outcomes
• Retention rates

The power of internal social proof is that it's yours. Nobody can dispute it. Nobody can copy it. It's unique to your business and your track record.

But you have to actually track it. If you can't quantify your results, you don't have internal proof—you just have claims. And claims without social proof don't convert.

2. Customer Social Proof: Show, Don't Tell

Customer social proof is what other people say about you. And it's one of the most powerful forms of credibility you can build in marketing.

We don't just say our systems work—we show it through customer testimonials and real stories.

Our "Wall of Love" is packed with video testimonials and written reviews from founders who've built high-growth businesses using our frameworks.

When a prospect sees someone who looks like them, sounds like them, and had the same problem they have... now singing your praises? That's when belief happens. That's social proof in its purest form.

Social proof takes many forms:

• Video testimonials (the gold standard for social proof)
• Written customer reviews
• Case studies with real names and faces
• User-generated content
• Before-and-after success stories

The key is specificity. Generic praise like "they're great to work with" doesn't move the needle. But "we went from $200K to $1.2M in revenue in 18 months using their system" creates powerful social proof because it gives prospects evidence that other people achieved real results.

One thing we learned: video testimonials outperform written ones by a mile. Why? Because you can see the emotion. You can hear the conviction in someone's voice when they say, "This changed my business."

That's hard to fake. Prospects know it. And that's why video creates stronger social proof than any other format.

3. Third-Party Proof: Marketing Through Borrowed Authority

Third-party proof is when someone else's credibility transfers to you. This form of social proof accelerates trust faster than almost anything else.

This is where features in Forbes and Inc. come in. Endorsements from recognized experts like Mike Michalowicz and Chris Do. Awards from industry bodies. Certifications from respected institutions.

When a trusted third party validates you, their audience becomes your audience. Their credibility becomes your social proof.

We didn't build our reputation from scratch in every market. We borrowed authority from people and publications our audience already trusted through strategic social proof.

That's the shortcut.

Third-party social proof accelerates belief because it skips the "do I trust this person?" phase entirely. If someone you already trust vouches for them, the mental barrier drops. That's the power of social influence at work.

Where can you build third-party social proof?

• Media mentions (even local press counts as social proof)
• Guest appearances on respected podcasts
• Speaking engagements at industry events
• Certifications and accreditations
• Partnerships with recognized brands
• Endorsements from known figures in your space

You don't need to be on the cover of TIME Magazine. You just need validation from sources your target market respects. That's enough social proof to shift behavior..

How We Stack Social Proof in Our Marketing

We don't leave belief to chance. We engineer social proof into every piece of marketing we create.

Every piece of content we create, every sales conversation we have, every page on our website stacks these three types of social proof:

Internal: 10,000+ founders helped. Tracked outcomes. Data-driven case studies and success stories.

Customer social proof: Video testimonials. Written reviews. Real names, real faces, real results. Stories that create behavioral conformity—when one founder sees another succeed, they believe they can too.

Third-Party social proof: Media features. Expert endorsements. Industry recognition that amplifies our marketing credibility.

When someone lands on our site or reads our emails, they're not wondering if this works. They're seeing the social proof that it already has—for thousands of people just like them.

That's the difference between asking someone to trust you and giving them social proof they can't ignore.

Your Social Proof Audit

Take 10 minutes right now and answer these questions:

Internal Social Proof:

• What measurable results have you delivered?
• How many clients have you served?
• What success stories can you turn into case studies?

Customer Social Proof:

• Do you have video testimonials? If not, why not?
• Are your case studies specific or generic?
• Can prospects see themselves in your customer stories?

Third-Party Social Proof:

• What media mentions do you have?
• Who in your industry could endorse you?
• What certifications or partnerships add credibility to your marketing?

If you're coming up short in any category, that's your next move.

Because when your prospects ask, "Why should I believe you?"—you need social proof that doesn't require them to take a leap of faith.

The Social Proof Compound Effect

You can have clarity across five or six different things. But if you have absolute clarity around that one thing that matters more than anything else—people pay for that.

The same applies to social proof in marketing.

You don't need a hundred testimonials. You need the right customer testimonials. You don't need every media outlet. You need the social proof from sources your audience actually reads and trusts.

Stack your social proof strategically. Layer it throughout your marketing. Make it impossible for prospects to walk away unconvinced.

That's how you turn skeptics into believers. And believers into customers.

Want to see how we layer social proof into every part of our marketing system?

Download your personalized marketing strategy worksheet here.

Inside, you'll go through the same steps we use with clients to build a marketing strategy backed by social proof—not promises.

Most cafés think they're in the business of selling coffee.

They obsess over beans, machines, and latte art. They compete on price and location. And they wonder why customers treat them like a commodity.

What they miss: when you walk into a truly great café, you're not buying caffeine. You're experiencing a brand personality. The story. The theatre. The ritual. The education. That's what people remember. That's what keeps them coming back.

I recently spent time at one of our standout client locations—Rosso Coffee's North Melbourne roastery. Reviewers have called it "the cream of the crop." And what they've built goes way beyond a café or even a roastery.

They've built an ecosystem driven by a distinct brand personality.

Buried in that ecosystem is one of the most powerful lessons any business owner can learn: how to identify and develop your brand personality so it becomes the foundation of everything you do.

Let me walk you through what I saw.

This article is adapted from a video walkthrough I recorded at Rosso’s North Melbourne roastery. You can watch the full video here.

How Rosso Developed a Brand Personality With Intent

Rosso Coffee didn't happen by accident. Their brand personality was engineered.

Founder Rames left the corporate world to pursue something he genuinely cared about. He built Rosso on a simple but bold philosophy: coffee with character.

And that character—that brand personality—shows up everywhere.

They roast small batches every morning. They serve locals their daily fix. They ship beans across the country. They supply cafés that want precise, Melbourne-style craftsmanship.

What sets Rosso apart is how they've expanded—intentionally, not randomly. Every location plays a strategic part in the larger brand story. This isn't just a business model. It's brand architecture built on personality traits that customers can feel.

Businesses that blend in open more locations. Businesses with a strong brand personality let it guide every decision.

Rosso chose the second path.

Creating Brand Experiences That Define Your Identity

Inside the roastery, Rames walks visitors through the roasting process—the ideal resting time for beans, the meticulous approach behind each blend, from bright and complex to rich and chocolate-forward.

Nearby sits a fully restored 1960s Probat roaster, a piece of engineering theatre in its own right.

But the real magic isn't in the equipment. It's in the brand experiences they've designed around their craft. These experiences communicate their brand personality better than any tagline ever could.

Twice-daily coffee cupping sessions. Always fully booked. Coffee's version of wine tasting—an education in flavor, process, and sensory appreciation. This is brand personality in action: knowledgeable, generous, community-focused.

The "Make Your Own Coffee" bar. A crash course for the public to learn how to make incredible coffee at home. Another expression of their brand traits: approachable, educational, empowering.

Roastery + Espresso Bars + Wholesale + Online. These aren't departments. They're chapters in a single brand story—guiding customers from curious observer to informed connoisseur.

Most cafés sell a transaction. Rosso sells a journey. That's the power of a well-defined brand personality.

Build brand experiences around your personality, then let marketing amplify those experiences. That's how you create longevity.

Why Brand Personality Beats Craft Every Time

Walking through Rosso's setup, you quickly see what many business owners never figure out.

Craft alone won't save you.

In Melbourne, cafés are everywhere. Beans, machines, latte art—none of these are unique anymore. Skill won't separate you. A clear brand personality will.

You need two things dialed in:

1. Your craft
2. Your brand personality that connects with your audience

Then you build a bridge between them.

Rosso nails this. They don't just roast beans—they explain the process through the lens of their brand. They don't just pour espresso—they teach people why it tastes the way it does, reinforcing their personality traits with every interaction. They invite customers into the brand story behind the product.

Casual drinkers become loyal fans. Locals become evangelists. You build a business people talk about.

When you truly understand your audience and communicate your brand personality with precision:

• You stop competing on price
• You stop guessing at what "might" work
• You stop trying to be better—you become different

Communicate that brand personality consistently, and you stop blending in. You become the brand people remember.

The Brand Traits That Make Customers Choose You

Let's talk about the specific personality traits that make Rosso's brand resonate with their audience.

Educational without being pretentious. They teach you about coffee in a way that makes you feel smarter, not stupid.

Approachable but expert. They're masters of their craft, but they don't talk down to customers. That balance is a core part of their brand identity.

Community-driven. Everything they create—from cupping sessions to the maker bar—brings people together. It's not transactional. It's relational.

Quality-obsessed. Small batches. Precise roasting. Attention to detail. These aren't just operational choices—they're brand values that customers can see and feel.

These personality traits aren't random. They're deliberate. And they show up in every customer touchpoint.

That's the difference between brands that fade and brands that last.

How to Create a Brand Framework That Scales

Rames also told me about their experience in the Lean Marketing Accelerator.

For years, their marketing coordinator was doing what most internal teams do—taking action without a cohesive brand framework or structure.

The Accelerator changed that. It gave them clarity on their brand personality, a process for communicating it, and a system for consistent execution across every channel.

In Rames' words, it "dramatically improved performance."

When you develop a clear brand personality framework and shift from random marketing activities to a repeatable system, growth stops being accidental. It becomes inevitable.

Your brand personality becomes the filter for every decision: Does this align with who we are? Does this reinforce our personality traits? Does this serve our audience the way our brand promises?

Why Rosso Wins

Rosso isn't winning because they roast better beans (though they do).

They're winning because they've built:

• A brand story around their craft
• Brand experiences around their expertise
• A community around their brand personality

Understanding your craft gives you the foundation. Developing a clear brand personality multiplies your impact. Connecting the two consistently becomes the engine that grows your business.

People don't fall in love with what you sell. They fall in love with what you stand for, what you teach, and how you make them feel.

Your brand personality is what makes them feel something.

Rosso has mastered that balance.

Develop Your Brand Voice to Stand Out

Whether you run a café, a gym, a consultancy, or a coaching business, the rule stays the same.

Get clear on your brand personality. Then communicate it so clearly, so consistently, and so authentically that your audience can't help but feel it.

The market doesn't reward the "best" product. It rewards the most memorable brand personality.

Strong brands have distinct personality traits that customers recognize instantly. Weak brands sound like everyone else because they haven't done the work to identify what makes them different.

Rosso has their brand personality dialed in.

Do you?

Your Brand Personality Framework: Identify What Makes You Different

Most business owners know they're different—they just can't put it into words. They haven't identified the personality traits that make their brand unique.

That's why we created a simple framework to help you develop your brand personality in under 30 minutes.

Use this personality framework to get crystal clear on:

• The values that drive your brand identity
• The brand voice that sets you apart
• The personality traits your customers remember
• The brand experiences you want to create

Once you nail your brand personality, everything else—your messaging, your marketing, your positioning—becomes ten times easier.

Small hinges swing big doors. Brand personality is one of the biggest hinges in your business.

There’s a lie that keeps relationship-driven businesses stuck, and I hear it almost every week:

“Allan, my business is built on relationships. We have a long sales cycle. Marketing won’t help us.”

And every time, my answer is the same: Marketing is exactly what relationship-based businesses need, because marketing IS relationship building.

Somewhere along the line, “marketing” became synonymous with running ads, chasing clicks, or shouting the loudest online. But real marketing — the kind that actually works in long-sales-cycle industries — is much simpler and far more powerful: Marketing is the process of professionally and systematically building trust.

If you rely on relationships to win deals, you’re already doing marketing. You’re just doing it manually, inconsistently, and at a pace that doesn’t scale. It’s time to fix that.

What is Relationship-Based Marketing?

Relationship-based marketing is the strategic, ongoing process of:

• Attracting the right people into your world
• Educating them with genuine value
• Building trust long before the sale
• Positioning yourself as the safe, obvious choice

It mirrors what great relationship-driven businesses already do intuitively — just more consistently and at scale. In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, I describe copywriting as “salesmanship in print.”

The same principle applies here: Relationship-based marketing is relationship building… in systems. When done right, it creates warm, pre-sold buyers who already trust you before you ever speak to them.

Why Relationship-Based Marketing Matters (Especially When Sales Cycles Are Long)

If your sales cycle takes months — or even years — here’s the uncomfortable truth: You don’t have a sales problem. You have a pipeline consistency problem.

Deals stall. Budgets shift. Decision-makers change. Priorities move. But “hoping it will all work out” is not a strategy. When you depend on referrals, networking, and “staying top of mind,” you’re essentially rolling the dice on business survival.

Relationship-based marketing fixes that by:

• Creating a steady stream of conversations
• Building trust long before you need it
• Keeping you top-of-mind with value, not noise
• Shortening the time to “yes”
• Increasing the quality of inbound opportunities

It’s the difference between feast-and-famine cycles… and predictable pipeline.

How Most Businesses Get Relationship Marketing Completely Wrong

From my experience, most relationship-focused businesses make three big mistakes:

Mistake #1: Relying exclusively on one-to-one relationship building

Coffee meetings, networking lunches, and personal outreach are all great — but they’re slow and unscalable. If you rely purely on manual effort, you’ll always hit a ceiling. Your marketing must replicate your best relationship-building behaviors at scale. That’s what content, email nurturing, and value-based communication do.

Mistake #2: Acting like a faceless corporate robot

In real conversations, founders connect effortlessly. But put them in front of a keyboard, and suddenly they sound like a multinational bank’s legal department.

In The 1-Page Marketing Plan, I wrote:

“People buy from people, not from corporations.”

Your personality is an asset, not a liability. When you write as though you’re talking to one person, you build familiarity, warmth, and trust. This is where social media shines — not for chasing likes, but for demonstrating that you’re human and building social proof through how you show up.

Mistake #3: Doing “random acts of marketing”

Posting only when you remember. Sending an email only when things slow down. Going quiet for months at a time. This is relationship-building by accident instead of by design — and it leads to an unpredictable pipeline.

Lean Marketing exists precisely because relationship-driven businesses need systems more than any other type of business.

The Right Way to Do Relationship-Based Marketing

Here’s how to build a system that scales trust.

1. Attract the right people into your world

This doesn’t mean shouting. It means being findable. That starts with understanding who your ideal customer is, where they spend time, how they search for information, who influences their decisions, and what they care about.

Once you know this, you need to…

• Publish content that solves real problems
• Create simple lead magnets for early-stage prospects
• Show real personality (not corporate wallpaper)
• Use social media to engage, not broadcast

When the right people can find you easily — and see that you understand their world — trust begins long before the sales conversation.

2. Nurture with genuine value

The longer the sales cycle, the more important nurturing becomes. Not because you want to extend the sales cycle — but because nurturing is what shortens it.

A long sales cycle usually means: Your prospect doesn’t have enough confidence to take the next step yet. And confidence is built through nurturing.

While competitors are “checking in,” real marketers are building trust with:

• Stories that prove results
• Insight that shifts thinking
• Tools that create quick wins
• Education that removes friction
• Opinions that guide decisions
• Real help that earns authority

This is the kind of value that moves someone from “maybe later” to “let’s do this now.” In long sales cycles, silence kills momentum. Every day without value is a day your prospect drifts further away. But when they consistently hear from you with relevant, confidence-building content, three things happen:

1. Perceived risk drops
2. Trust increases
3. Decision speed accelerates

You’re not selling — you’re guiding. And that guidance shortens the sales cycle dramatically.

3. Demonstrate social proof the right way

Prospects want evidence — not hype.

They’re looking for:

• Accessibility
• Responsiveness
• How you treat people publicly
• How you handle both praise and complaints
• Proof that you consistently show up

The way you behave online and in public is a preview of how you’ll behave once they’re a customer. That’s why authentic social proof is such a powerful accelerant in the buying process — it reduces perceived risk instantly.

I recently spoke to someone using a large industry conglomerate. Their support was terrible, and the company openly admitted they had no intention of improving it. This is where small, relationship-driven businesses win: Your behavior becomes your biggest differentiator.

4. Deepen relationships with thoughtful touches

We use Giftology to deepen relationships with our clients because thoughtful touches compound trust and loyalty.

A great gift is:

• best-in-class for the budget
• personal (their name, not your logo)
• memorable
• delivered consistently over time

Clients are different: so our gifts are different. We listen, we learn, and we show up in a way that says: “We see you. We care.”

Take a moment and ask yourself, how can you do that for your customers?

5. Systemize your relationship engine

This is where the real leverage is.

You need a system that:

• Moves prospects through your pipeline
• Automates timely follow-ups
• Sends nurturing content consistently
• Positions you as the trusted authority
• Works even when you’re busy

Picking up the phone every few days is not a system.

To stay top-of-mind, you need to make consistent deposits of goodwill — updates, insights, case studies, guidance, invitations. This is precisely what we build inside the Lean Marketing Accelerator — a predictable, scalable marketing engine for businesses where relationships matter.

“Allan, Most Of My Business Comes From Referrals… That’s Not Marketing.”

Let’s clear this up once and for all:

Referrals are marketing. They’re one of the most powerful forms of direct response marketing.

A referral doesn’t fall from the sky. It’s created through a deliberate chain of events:

• You delivered value
• You built trust
• Someone felt confident enough to put their reputation on the line
• And if you’re smart, you asked for it

That is marketing. The problem is that most businesses treat referrals as accidental, unpredictable, and out of their control. They think: “If we do good work, people will talk about us.” “If someone remembers us, we’ll get the call.” “Referrals just happen.”

This mindset keeps businesses stuck in the “hope and pray” model.

A referral system is NOT hope. It’s engineered. Successful businesses don’t wait for referrals — they manufacture them.

They:

• Ask at the right moment
• Make it easy to refer
• Provide the language to use
• Create referral assets
• Follow up and stay top-of-mind
• Reward referral behavior
• Track referral flow as a real marketing channel

If referrals bring you most of your business, then you’re already doing marketing — just manually and inconsistently.

Stop Saying “Marketing Isn’t Built for My Business.”

If you’ve ever believed marketing doesn’t work for relationship-driven businesses, the opposite is true:

Marketing is relationship-building at scale. It’s how you stay top-of-mind without chasing, how you earn trust without begging, and how you build a predictable pipeline without gambling.

If you want a system that consistently and professionally grows relationships—and revenue— check out the Lean Marketing Accelerator. We make marketing your business easy.

Running a business is hard. It eats your time, drains your energy, and—if you’re not careful—traps you inside the very machine you built.

For years, I thought the grind was normal. I figured if I paid people well and did interesting work, my company culture and the systemization of my business would take care of themselves.

Spoiler alert: they don’t.

After years of working with business owners inside our Lean Marketing Accelerator, I’ve seen the same pattern play out again and again:

Smart entrepreneurs waste their best hours doing low-value tasks. Not because they want to, but because they haven’t built a business that can run without them.

In this article, I’m going to show you exactly how to change that. Read it, and you’ll walk away knowing how to step back from the day-to-day grind, reclaim your time, and focus on the work that actually grows your business.

Let’s dive in.

You’re stuck in the weeds

Whether you like it or not, I guarantee that you’re probably doing too much. From experience, I can tell you that most business owners are. Don’t believe?

Take a moment to think about the tasks on your daily plate. What hats are you wearing? If you hold the role of marketing, admin, accounts, fulfillment, and product development, stop wondering why you have no time to focus on strategy. That’s why.

You’re too busy. And while you might congratulate yourself on being able to juggle all these balls, the knock-on effect is that you don’t have time to sink into your genius zone.

So what’s the solution?

It isn’t working harder or automating everything overnight. It’s not even hiring a team of unicorns. The solution is to build systems, document everything, and delegate the low-value work.

Because you cannot automate chaos, and you cannot delegate guesswork.

If your goal is to scale your business in 2026, but everything still lives inside your head, you have a problem. It needs to be put on paper first, then turned into a system you can delegate.

Here’s exactly how to do just that.

Step 1: List Every Hat You Wear

The first step to freeing up your time is understanding which activities you’re spending it on. To start, jot down all the tasks you fulfil on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. You’d be surprised by how much you’re actually doing.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a solo operator. I still want you to write them all down.

Your list could look something like this:

• Accounts and Finance - Bookkeeping, invoicing, chasing late payments, payroll, cash-flow tracking
• Customer service - Answering inquiries, reviewing requests, handling complaints, refunds/exchanges, updating FAQs
• Marketing - Content creation, social engagement, email flows, updating website, designing graphics
• Fulfillment/Delivery - Packing/shipping, managing suppliers, inventory checks, scheduling deliveries, and client onboarding
• Sales - Lead qualification, sales calls, proposals/quotes, follow-ups, signing contracts
• Product development - Research, testing new offers, updating features, writing SOPs, and competitive research
• Scheduling and Calendar Management - Booking meetings, rescheduling, confirmations, reminders, coordinating availability
• Admin - Ordering supplies, filing, organising digital folders, travel booking, internal docs
• Operations - Workflow design, hiring/onboarding, vendor management, QA checks, internal communication

This becomes the blueprint for freeing yourself.

Step 2: Identify the Low-Value Tasks

The reality is that not all tasks are created equal. While some grow your business, most don’t. Your goal is to remove any low-value tasks from your business plate.

Low-value tasks could include:

• Scheduling
• Booking flights
• Inbox cleanup
• Follow-ups
• Admin
• Packing boxes
• Data entry
• Cleaning

They seem inconsequential, but you’d be surprised by how much time these tasks actually can take. Don’t believe me? Time yourself.

I did this exercise with my team members. To better understand their capacity, I needed to know where they were spending their time and how long each task took.

The results were eye-opening. Where possible, I’ve tried to automate tasks, or better yet, delegate them to assistants. It’s made a world of difference.

Remember, low-value tasks must eventually be delegated, because they steal your most precious asset: your time.

Step 3: Build systems before you delegate

So now that you’ve identified the tasks that aren’t worth your time, naturally, you want to delegate them. Only, you can’t. Why? Because you can’t delegate a task without documenting how to do it.

Whether your goal is to hand something off to a team member or to AI, they need to know the exact steps. Otherwise, it will take them 10x longer than it takes you. Or, they create their own way of doing things. This could be beneficial to you, but it could also be a disaster.

Here’s how I like to document my systems. Start simple:

• Record a Loom video of you doing the task. Talk through the process as you go.
• Now write a checklist. Just drop the transcript into AI to build the checklist.
• Next, create a step-by-step SOP. Again, use AI to do the heavy lifting.
• Edit and save it in a folder called “Systems”

This is a great exercise to deploy as a solopreneur. Every time you complete a task, document it and save it in a folder you can hand off—quickly and cleanly.

This is how real businesses scale.

I break down exactly how to build a business process in 8-steps here.

AI won’t save you (unless you do this first)

Everyone wants to automate everything with AI. The only problem is that AI is useless without good instructions.

What you want to do is treat AI like a team member:

✔ It needs to know exactly what you want

✔ It needs your preferences

✔ It needs a documented process

Once you have that, automation becomes powerful. For example, we used to manually edit podcasts, switching between camera feeds and active speakers. This took hours of work. Now, tools like Descript automatically detect the active speaker.

It cut our workload by 80%. Not because of AI alone, but because the process was documented well enough to automate intelligently.

You can’t afford NOT to delegate

Now you might be thinking, “But Allan, I can’t afford to hire someone.” Here’s why you’re thinking about it wrong. And this I learned from my good friend Dan Martell, the author of Buy Back Your Time:

Calculate your effective hourly rate.

Basically, you divide your business's profit by the hours you work. If that number is $50/hour, anything that costs less than $50/hour for someone else to do should be delegated.

Laundry? Cleaning? Packing boxes? Admin? Responding to emails? Booking flights? You get the idea.

Someone can do it for $25–30/hour. Heck, someone could do it for $15 p/h. Now, instead of you saving a measly $25, you spend that time generating $50–100/hour doing high-value work.

Suddenly, you’re making money. Delegation is not a cost. It’s an ROI calculation. So ask yourself, what could you be spending your time doing if you weren’t using it on low-value tasks?

How, Who, When: The Process Triad

Every process in your business can be defined by three things:

1. How it’s done
2. Who does it
3. When it needs to happen

I’ll give you an example. Take a café that closes at 3 pm. Their process might be to bring in the outside furniture, clean the coffee machine, sweep the floor, stack the dishwasher, add loo paper to the bathrooms, put the hand towels in the washing machine, and lock up.

Having this process mapped out means their staff gets the job done right, every time. Which ultimately means they deliver a consistent experience, something their customers expect.

If you want to see the same results, you need to write down how you do the task, assign responsibility, and set the timing.

That process is critical to scaling and achieving the freedom you so badly want.

Stop doing everything yourself

To recap, the fastest way to grow your business is shockingly simple:

1. Document what you do
2. Delegate what drains you
3. Automate what’s repeatable
4. Reinforce the systems

This is how you reclaim your time. It’s how you grow without burning out, and it’s how you finally work on your business—not in it.

If you have the goal of scaling and freeing up your time so you can take a holiday without your laptop, start building systems.

Buy Back Your Time. Starting today.

You don’t need to overhaul your entire business. Trying to do everything at once will only overwhelm you. The result is you’ll get nothing done.

Instead, start with one task. Then move on to another and another. Before you know it, you’ve built a business that doesn’t rely on you for every decision. Most importantly, you get to step into the role you were meant for: the leader of your business, not its bottleneck.

And that’s a powerful place to be.

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How important is company culture to you?

For years, I thought company culture was a load of crap. In my mind, if you paid people well, gave them interesting work, and treated them fairly, the rest would sort itself out… right?

Boy, was I wrong.

I’ve seen too many founders scale their companies, hit real traction, build something meaningful, and then wake up one day and realise they don’t even recognise the business they created. Not only had their company culture drifted, but standards had slipped, and people no longer felt aligned.

If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, you might have wondered, “How the hell did we get here?” I’ve been there, and I’ll be honest, culture was never my strong suit.

Then I met Robert Glazer, a founder who actually managed to scale a global organisation while still retaining its values.

And not pretend values like integrity, teamwork, or “move fast and break things.” I’m talking about the kind of values that guide behaviour, shape decisions, and actually mean something in the day-to-day.

I was lucky enough to speak with Robert on the Lean Marketing Podcast. We dug into:

• How do you protect culture while growing fast?
• How do you hire people who actually align with your values — not just nod at them in an interview?
• How do you lead authentically when your team doubles, triples, or hits 100+ people?
• And how do you avoid becoming the kind of company you swore you’d never be?

In this article, I’m going to share some of the most powerful lessons from our conversation.

Lesson 1: Culture isn’t the perks you offer. It’s the behaviors you reward

Silicon Valley broke our definition of culture. Adding ping-pong tables and free snacks doesn’t create a powerful culture. Neither is a free flu shot at your desk, so you never leave the office. That’s definitely not the type of culture you should be striving for.

Robert said it perfectly:

“Culture is simply the behaviors you reward — not the words you print on the wall.”

If you celebrate 18-hour days, you’ll create a culture of burnout. Leave that to the Elon Musks of this world.

If you say you value excellence but promote speed-at-all-costs, your team will take shortcuts. Why? Because that’s what you’re actually rewarding.

Instead, reward ownership, initiative, and outcomes. People who feel appreciated and have clear goals are far happier and more likely to go the extra mile than those who don’t.

Lesson 2: Most companies have fake values that nobody follows

Robert told me a story about an office he saw with 25 different “core values” printed in giant letters on the wall. Words like respect, humility, honesty, and teamwork. A woman messaged him saying, “This looks exactly like our company’s core values. Where did you find them?”

He wrote back: “You may want to read the article… I was making fun of them.”

Here’s why most values fail:

• They’re generic
• They’re not behavior-driven
• They’re never enforced
• Leadership can’t even remember them
• They’re contradicted by what the company actually rewards

If your core values aren’t alive in your hiring, firing, promotions, awards, and performance reviews… they’re not values. They’re wall décor.

So let me ask you this, “What are your core values?” If you can’t name them off the top of your head, it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Lesson 3: Your company’s culture will mirror you

I said it before, and I’ll say it again. A company’s brand and culture are derivatives of its founder.

You can see Steve Jobs in Apple, Richard Branson in Virgin, and Elon Musk in Tesla. For better or worse. And Robert agrees.

Your personal core values heavily shape your company’s values, especially in the early years. If you’re not intentional about that, your culture evolves by accident, and usually in the wrong direction.

The biggest threat to culture is the say–do gap. When what leaders say the company values doesn’t match what leaders do in reality.

Fix that gap, and culture becomes a superpower. Ignore it, and the rot spreads fast.

Lesson 4: You can’t keep everyone as the company grows

This is probably one of the most uncomfortable truths I’m going to share. And Robert put it best, “Every time you double your revenue, you break half your people and half your processes.”

It’s brutal, but it’s true. The person who was perfect for your company at $1M isn’t necessarily right for you at $10M. That enthusiastic utility player who could “do everything” often struggles once you have a 10-person team, because the business now needs specialists, operators, and leaders. Not generalists

For many founders, we avoid tough conversations. Instead of confronting the truth — that an employee has outgrown the role or the role has outgrown them — we delay. And the delay always makes things worse.

Robert explained the psychology behind it. He explained that leaders start to get annoyed with the employee. Not because the person is bad, but because it’s easier to fire someone you’re irritated with.

The better way? Deal with reality early and respectfully:

• “This role has outgrown your current skillset.”
• “We care about you and will support you, but this isn’t working.”
• “Let’s plan your next step — inside or outside the company.”

When handled with honesty, empathy, and clarity, transitions become growth moments instead of crises.

Take a look at your current team members and ask yourself, “Whose role has outgrown them?” It may be time to have an honest conversation with them. At least it gives them an opportunity to shape up or move on.

Lesson 5: Personal core values make better leaders

Another vital piece that Robert’s new book focuses on is your personal core values, something most founders completely overlook.

Your personal core values aren’t the company values. Nor are they inspirational posters or broad words like integrity, excellence, and teamwork.

They are your actual, foundational, individual values. The ones that drive your decisions, shape your leadership, and dictate your reactions.

Robert claims only 2% of people have identified and written down their personal core values. And those 2% lead differently. They make clearer decisions, create healthier relationships, run more aligned teams, and build cultures that last.

One of the most interesting exercises Robert shared was the anti-value test: Identify the behaviors and traits that infuriate you in others — and invert them. The opposite is often one of your core values. Brilliant.

So take a moment to jot down what you value in your personal life. Now compare it to your professional life. They shouldn’t be that dissimilar. And if they are, well you need to re-evaluate your company values.

Lesson 6: AI changes everything and this makes human values more Important

Both Robert and I use AI heavily. But we don’t use it to replace work. We use AI to enhance the work we do.

AI is my editor, the partner I can bounce my ideas off, my dedicated researcher, and productivity multiplier. That’s a wonderful thing. But it also comes with a danger: becoming a crutch instead of an amplifier.

The future belongs to leaders who:

• Use AI to accelerate their work
• Maintain the human creativity, and judgement machines can’t match
• Build teams who understand how to partner with technology
• Double down on authenticity, empathy, and real human connection

As Robert said:

“The only advantage we’ll have over machines is our humanity. If we stop developing that, we can’t beat the machine.”

Remember, AI doesn’t replace good people, it enables them to be better and do better work.

And that’s the six key lessons I’d like you to take away when it comes to building a company culture you can be proud of.

Read “The Compass Within” to transform your company culture

If you’re ready to build a world-class company culture, then you need to read The Compass Within by Robert Glaze. I believe it should be standard reading for every business owner. Because what he teaches isn’t just about being a better leader. It’s about building a business that grows without losing who you are in the process.

It’s one of the most practical and powerful guides I’ve seen for discovering your core values and using them to build better businesses, teams, and lives.

👉 Grab it here: https://geni.us/values

Scale the company you’re proud to be apart of

Yes, you absolutely can scale without losing your soul but only if you do it intentionally.

Building a genuinely good company culture requires clarity, courage, and consistency. It also starts from the top down. If you’re not living your values, your team won’t.

If you want to build a company that grows and stays true to who you are, this is where you start.

1. Define the behaviours you reward.
2. Live your values.
3. Close the say–do gap.
4. Have the hard conversations early.
5. Hire and fire based on alignment.
6. And don’t let growth outpace your leadership.

If you get your values right, everything else gets easier — decisions, hiring, delegation, communication, even team performance.

👉 Listen to our full conversation: https://leanmarketing.com/podcast/how-to-grow-a-business-that-reflects-your-values-with-robert-glazer

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One of the most important and misunderstood decisions you’ll ever make in your business is how you set your price.

From your profit margins to your growth potential and even how customers perceive your value, price impacts everything. And yet most business owners spend more time picking their website template than they do crafting their pricing strategy.

Maybe you’ve fallen into this trap. Perhaps you asked the wrong questions, like: “What are my competitors charging?” or “What markup feels acceptable?”

That’s not strategy. That’s sleepwalking into mediocrity.

Price isn’t just a number on a page. It’s a strategic marketing lever — one of the most powerful tools you have to shape perception, influence behavior, and drive growth.

In this article I’m going to show you how to use price intentionally to position your brand, increase your profit, and attract the right customers. Let’s dive in.

1. Price is a positioning signal. Not a cost-plus calculation.

Have you ever though about how Rolls-Royce or Ferrari set their prices? I guarantee it’s not by adding up the cost of steel, leather, and labor, then tacking on a markup.

These brands understand something most business owners miss, and that’s price is a story. It tells the market who you are, what you stand for, and what level of value you deliver.

When you position yourself as an educator, a trusted adviser, or a category leader, pricing becomes more flexible.

I’ll give you an example. Nobody wants the cheapest heart surgeon. If you’re going to be cranking open my chest, you better have done it a thousand times. So people want the best and they’re willing to pay for it.

But if your price doesn’t reflect your positioning, you create a credibility gap. And that gap costs you not just in profit, but in trust.

Take a look at your pricing model. If you’re underpricing yourself, raise your prices.

2. Less choice equals more conversions

Another pricing trap that kills conversions is offering your customers too many options. Intuitively, we think “more choice equals more sales.” Wrong!

In reality, the opposite is true. A famous study by Professor Sheena Iyengar at Columbia University proved it.

In a California market, when shoppers were offered 24 flavors of jam, 60% stopped at the booth but only 3% purchased. When offered just 6 flavors, fewer stopped by the booth, but of those that did, 30% bought.

Why? Because too much choice overwhelms people. When customers are unsure, they freeze. And instead of trying to find the right option, they walk away… because it takes too much effort.

This is why Apple offers only a handful of variations per product. It’s not a limitation. It’s a sales strategy. One that has netted them an almost evangelical customer base.

So here’s what I want you to do.

• Create a clear “Standard” offer.
• Create a “Premium” version with more value but low additional cost to you.

The “Premium” tier should deliver the highest profit margin while helping customers self-select their level of investment.

3. Remove risk with “Unlimited”

From experience I can tell you that most customers fear uncertainty more than they fear higher prices. They don’t want to be stung by surprise costs and that fear kills deals. You can eliminate it entirely with an “unlimited” pricing option.

A few examples:

• An IT company offering unlimited support for a fixed monthly fee.
• A restaurant offering unlimited beverage refills.
• A consultant offering unlimited calls within scope.

People tend to overestimate their future usage at the point of purchase. So while they think they’re getting a great deal, in reality the cost to you is predictable, and the offer builds trust and increases conversions.

Remember, unlimited pricing isn’t about giving away the farm. It’s about giving customers peace of mind and making the buying decision easy.

4. Add an ultra high-ticket offer

Every market has a small group of customers who want the best of the best. And their signal for the “best” is price. Some customers are willing to pay 10x, 20x, even 100x more than the standard offer for a premium experience, faster results, or higher status.

Think private jets, luxury cars, first-class service. This is the beauty of a high-ticket offer:

• One sale can equal dozens of standard ones.
• It attracts affluent, decisive buyers.
• It makes everything else in your range look more affordable by comparison.

A good rule of thumb is 10% of your customers will pay 10x more. 1% will pay 100x more. But here’s the kicker: if you don’t offer them something to buy at that level, they can’t.

Do you have an ultra high-ticket offer? If not, start creating one.

5. Resist the urge to discount

When markets get competitive, many businesses panic. And panic leads to poor decision making, most notably, many businesses start discounting. That’s a dangerous game.

Discounting erodes your margins, damages your positioning and trains customers to expect lower prices. Unless it’s a deliberate loss leader strategy, discounting is usually a race to the bottom.

A smarter play is to add value instead of cutting price. Here’s what I like to do:

✅ Bundle services.

✅ Include bonuses.

✅ Extend access or support.

Do this and your perceived value increases, your margins stay healthy, and your brand remains strong. Look at your current offer. What can you add to the mix that increases value?

6. Make price a marketing lever, not an afterthought

Most businesses treat pricing as a one-time decision. Set it. Forget it. Move on.The truth is pricing is dynamic. It’s a lever you can test, measure, and refine over time.

Your price affects how people perceive your product. It shapes the type of customers you attract. And it directly impacts your profitability.

Remember, price isn’t what you think your product is worth. It’s what your market believes it’s worth. That’s why pricing isn’t just a financial decision, it’s a strategic marketing decision.

If you’re setting your price based on what others are doing, or what you think the market would be willing to pay for, you have a losing strategy.

To win in business price like a strategist, not a copycat

Stop basing your prices on what your competitors are doing. Stop picking numbers out of thin air. Stop treating price like a back-office calculation.

Price is a front-line marketing tool. It’s how you signal value, influence perception, protect your brand, drive higher margins and win the right customers. When you master your pricing strategy, you stop playing the low-cost game and start owning your market position.

So here’s my challenge to you:

Step 1: Review your pricing today.

Step 2: Simplify your offers.

Step 3: Introduce a premium tier.

Step 4: Remove risk.

Step 5: Add value instead of discounting.

Price isn’t just a number. It’s one of the sharpest weapons in your marketing arsenal. Use it wisely.

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Why Most Marketing Fails

Let me be blunt: if you can’t explain what you do in 10 seconds to a 12-year-old, your messaging is garbage.

Most entrepreneurs believe their ads don’t work because they’re not spending enough. Wrong. Your ads, websites, and emails all fail for the same reason: your message isn’t landing.

1. You’re busy talking about features, while your customers are buying feelings.
2. You’re chasing tactics when the foundation is broken.

Until you fix your messaging, every marketing dollar you spend is like pouring water into a leaky bucket.

The Cost of Broken Messaging

Here’s what business looks like when your messaging misses the mark:

• You pour hours and dollars into ads, websites, and content… only to get crickets.
• Your emails get delivered, but they’re never opened.
• Prospects scroll past your offers and bounce from your site because nothing resonates.
• Your sales team struggles to close because leads aren’t pre-sold on your value.
• You start second-guessing everything: your product, price, even your entire business model.

Sound familiar? That’s messaging madness. And it’s why you need a systematic framework to fix it.

Introducing the 9-Step Messaging Framework

I call this the Message-to-Money Multiplier.

The truth is, when you get your message right, everything else in your business multiplies. Ads work better. Sales get easier. Referrals increase.

It’s not the only framework we teach, either. If you want a deeper dive into how world-class businesses attract attention, you should check out my breakdown of the 7-Step Messaging Framework. It complements the 9-step process beautifully, giving you even more tools to structure your message and stand out.

1. Listen Before You Write

Your best copy isn’t created in a brainstorming session. It’s pulled directly from your customers’ mouths. They’re already telling you what matters through reviews, testimonials, support emails, and sales calls. All you need to do is pay attention.

For example, take Cloud Trailz, a customer of ours. They were struggling to attract any customers, and much of this was a result of poor messaging. But not anymore.

After working with Lean Marketing, they went from zero leads in their pipeline to 12 with two closing, simply by revising their messaging. Those customer experience interviews that we conducted were instrumental in refining and refocusing their messaging.

Marcus from Cloud Trailz said, “Messaging has made so many other aspects of our marketing efforts easy. Even when thinking of what to focus on saying for Google Ads, I can now easily revert to our core messaging.”

When you borrow your ideal customer’s exact language, you’re not just writing—you’re reflecting their thoughts back to them. That builds instant trust.

Stop guessing what your customers want to hear. Start speaking their language, word for word.

2. Find the Patterns

Once you’ve collected enough raw feedback, don’t treat it as random noise. Look for the threads that keep repeating. These are the phrases, frustrations, and emotions you see over and over.

They’re your gold.

They reveal the pain points and desires that matter most to your market. Those recurring themes become the pillars of your message.

You can do this manually. Alternatively, use ChatGPT to analyze your customer testimonials or reviews and identify recurring themes. Then look critically at your current messaging.

Does it touch on your customers’ pain points?

I’ll give you an example.

Our client, Tonic Living, constantly spoke about helping their customers craft cozy homes. We wanted to confirm whether their customers felt the same. So we sent a survey, and the results were enlightening. Not one of their customers used the word cozy.

Instead, they used words and phrases like “beautiful fabric, quality pillows, and Canadian-made.” This is why they bought from Tonic Living. Armed with this newfound knowledge, they updated their emails, website copy, and social media pages, and they’re seeing consistent growth.

If you want to go deeper, I’ve unpacked the essential elements of magnetic messaging, where I show you exactly how to turn these patterns into words that attract, not just inform.

3. Map the Awareness Journey

Here’s a mistake most entrepreneurs make: they treat every prospect like they’re ready to buy today. But not everyone is at the same stage. Some don’t even know they have a problem yet.

Others are searching for solutions but don’t know you exist.

That’s why you need to map the Awareness Journey—from Unaware → Problem Aware → Solution Aware → Product Aware → Most Aware.

Take Mari from Fly Home Dragonfly Realtors.

”I was working on my copy and redid some of my pieces based on my client avatar that I developed through the interviews that my assistant did with my clients. It’s made my organic messaging really effective, and I’ve had a lot of organic new business. As a matter of fact, I have five houses closing between September 2 and September 23! All of these just came up within the last month, so it’s just been overwhelmingly busy. Definitely a result of better messaging.”

Tailor your message to where your customer is, not where you wish they were. If you skip this step, you risk sounding tone-deaf or irrelevant.

4. Speak to Their Pain

Let’s be blunt, nobody cares about your product. What they care about is relief.

They’re walking around with frustrations, fears, and challenges. Your job is to show them how you’ll take that pain away.

I’ll give you an example. When you have a severe headache, you don’t care about how much the medicine costs, right? You just want to know if it works and how quickly it’ll alleviate your pain.

The same goes for your customers.

You might not be the most affordable solution. But if you can surprise your prospects, set their minds at ease, demonstrate you understand their pain and can solve it easily, whilst delivering a superior experience, they’ll choose you, even if you cost more.

Don’t just describe your offer. Paint the “before and after” picture: here’s your struggle now, and here’s how life looks once we fix it. When you frame your message around the pain you solve, prospects lean in because they finally feel understood.

5. Sell What They’re Really Buying

Most entrepreneurs fall into the trap of selling features. When in reality, your customers buy feelings.

No one buys “cloud storage with 1TB capacity.” They buy peace of mind that their files are safe. No one buys “faster shipping.” They buy status by showing up first with the latest gadget.

Under every purchase is a deeper motivator: time, money, status, security, or confidence. If you don’t uncover that, you’ll get beaten by a competitor who does.

Stop selling the thing. Start selling the transformation.

What are your customers really buying?

6. Define Your Brand Voice

Messaging isn’t just about what you say. It’s about how you say it. What values guide your business?

An exercise I like to do with my clients is to ask them, “If your brand were a person, how would it talk?”

• What are your mission, vision, and values?
• What words do you love to use?
• What words do you avoid?
• How do you want your customer to feel?

Defining your brand voice makes your messaging feel consistent and authentic across every channel, whether it’s your homepage, a social ad, or an email campaign. When customers recognize your “voice,” they start to trust you like a familiar friend.

And trust, more than clever words, is what drives buying decisions.

But identifying your brand messaging isn’t just for the benefit of getting customers. Having an airtight brand voice will serve you as your business grows. Because at some point, you’ll need to expand your team. And being able to give a new copywriter or social media manager your brand guide ensures they deliver a consistent experience.

7. Create a Hero Message

Think of your homepage as your storefront. When someone lands on it, they should know in seconds:

1. What do you do?
2. How do you make their life better?
3. And what should they do next?

That’s your hero message. It’s short, sharp, and simple.

Unfortunately, so many businesses get this wrong.

Forget clever slogans that confuse people. Clarity beats cleverness every time. A great hero message doesn’t make people think—it makes them say, “That’s exactly what I need.”

Here are a few examples to inspire you.

8. Tailor Supporting Messages

Your hero message sets the tone, but your supporting messages do the heavy lifting. Each sales or landing page needs its own focused hero statement.

Ask yourself: what’s the deliverable? What’s the transformation? What action should the visitor take right now?

Supporting messages keep your message tight and relevant so people don’t drift away, wondering what you actually do. Each page should feel like a conversation that leads naturally to the next step.

9. Test With the Magnetic Messaging Filters

Before you call your messaging “done,” run it through a simple filter:

• Is it about them (not you)?
• Is it easy to understand?
• Is it believable?
• Is it interesting?
• Is it clear who it’s for and what to do next?

Whatever you do, don’t skip this step. It’s the difference between messaging that falls flat and messaging that makes customers move.

A Real-World Example: Red Mountain Motors

Let me give you a story.

Darla joined her husband’s used car dealership, and their website wasn’t converting. Their messaging was bland, just another car lot in a sea of car lots.

Through the 9-Step Messaging Framework, we uncovered the truth: their customers weren’t buying cars. They were buying trust and peace of mind.

So we rewrote their hero message to:

“Top quality cars backed by a team that treats you like family.”

That one shift reframed their brand. Instead of fighting the sleazy car salesman stereotype, they positioned themselves as the dealership families could trust. The result? More leads, more conversions, and a brand that finally stood out.

Most businesses don’t fail because of bad products. They fail because of bad messaging.

When you master your message:

• Your ads stop being ignored.
• Your sales conversations flow naturally.
• Your website becomes a lead magnet, not a brochure.
• Your entire marketing system starts working the way it should.

Your message is your market. Get it right, and everything else becomes easier.

🎧 Want to go deeper?

This framework is just one part of what we implement with our Accelerator clients to break through growth plateaus. Get your messaging right first, and watch the rest of your marketing multiply.

Most businesses don’t have a traffic problem. They have a conversion problem.

Think of it like trying to fill a bucket full of holes. You can pour water in the top all day, but until you plug the leaks, it’ll never fill.

That’s what most entrepreneurs are doing with their marketing. They spend thousands on ads to chase more leads and churn out campaigns, but until they fix their funnel, it’ll continue to leak customers at every step.

The average conversion across all industries is about 2.35% — which means you’re losing roughly 97–98 out of every 100 visitors or website leads. Until you plug the leaks in your funnel, lead generation will continue to amplify bad results.

This is what kills business growth. And if you’re not monitoring your numbers closely, you won’t know it until it’s too late.

The Lead Addiction Trap

This is what I like to call a lead addiction. You believe the solution to flat sales is always more traffic, more clicks, more eyeballs. But the math doesn’t add up. And it’s not just you.

Entrepreneurs all over the world chase more leads.

But studies show that for every $92 businesses spend on acquiring customers, they only spend $1 on converting them. That’s a broken equation. With ~2.35% average site conversion, most businesses are letting almost everyone slip away.

And yet, most business owners keep pushing money into ads, ignoring the leaks in their funnel. It’s like turning up the faucet when the real problem is the cracks in the pipe.

Here’s the reality: even a small improvement in your conversion rate will give you more profit than doubling your traffic. Optimize before you amplify.

The Daily Reality of a Leaky Funnel

You already know the symptoms.

• You’re spending thousands on ads every month, but your revenue is flat.
• Your customer acquisition cost keeps climbing while margins shrink.
• You feel busy. That’s right, traffic is growing, but your bank account doesn’t reflect it.
• Worst of all, you watch competitors with worse products leap ahead, and you can’t figure out why.

If you answered yes to any of the above, you have a leak bucket at work. Until you fix the holes, more water just drains faster. So start by identifying the holes. Then figure out what you need to do to close the gap.

It could be that you need to improve your onboarding process. Adding a simple email follow-up sequence or a quick Zoom check-in can make all the difference.

Fix leaks with a Minimum Viable Marketing System (MVMS)

So how do you fix the leaks?

With a Minimum Viable Marketing System (MVMS) a force multiplier — it turns limited time, money, and energy into outsized outcomes by removing friction and compounding small wins.. This is a simple but powerful framework we use inside the Lean Marketing Accelerator.

The goal isn’t to pile on more complexity or chase shiny new tactics. It’s about building the right foundation in the right order.

Do this well, and growth stops being chaotic and starts becoming predictable.

So your MVMS has five components (pillars):

1. Create A Strategy With Metrics That Matter

Most entrepreneurs say they “do marketing,” but very few measure what matters. Vanity metrics like likes, impressions, and clicks feel good, but they don’t pay the bills.

What matters are the Revenue Reality Numbers:

• What’s your conversion rate right now?
• What’s your average transaction size?
• What’s your cost to acquire a customer (CAC)?
• What’s your lifetime value (LTV)?
• How many leads and sales do you actually need to hit your revenue goal?

You should be able to wake up at 3am and rattle off those metrics. Inside our Accelerator, we refuse to talk about lead generation until the leaks are plugged and these numbers are clear.

Using the Revenue Reality Formula (Revenue Goal ÷ Average Sale ÷ Conversion Rate = Leads Needed), you get clarity fast. From experience I can tell you that doubling conversions gives a far bigger return than doubling traffic.

I'll break it down for you. If you get 100 leads per month at 2% conversion, that’s 2 sales. Improve that to 4% and you’ve doubled sales without spending another dollar on ads. Were you to target $50k per month at $5k per sale you'd need 10 sales. With 100 leads, that’s a 10% conversion target.

The conclusion: Most teams don’t have a traffic problem; they have a conversion and systems problem.

This is why I always recommend reading The Only Marketing Metrics That Really Matter. Because once you know the right numbers, you stop chasing hype and start making smarter, more profitable decisions.

2. Focus on Conversion Optimization

Traffic without conversion is useless. If your website, emails, or sales process aren’t clear, people won’t act.

I like to prove the theory with a 5-second test. If someone lands on your homepage, can they tell within five seconds what you do, who it’s for, and why they should care? If not, you’re losing them.

Another simple tactic is to record your sales calls. Listen to the exact words customers use. If your website doesn’t echo that language, your messaging is off. One Accelerator client tripled conversions simply by swapping industry jargon for customer-friendly words pulled straight from real conversations.

Remember the mantra: optimize before you amplify.

3. Implement An Infrastructure That Works Together

Most businesses get stuck because their tools don’t talk to each other. They’ve got one CRM, a separate email system, three analytics dashboards, and a spreadsheet to hold it all together. Every extra tool adds friction, and friction kills conversion.

The MVMS approach is different. It focuses on keeping it simple. One CRM. One email platform. One project manager. One analytics system. That’s it. When your tools integrate cleanly, your processes run smoother, and your team stops wasting time on tech headaches.

I’ve laid out the details in How To Build A Marketing Infrastructure That Scales Your Small Business Rapidly. If your infrastructure is messy, you’re not scaling; you’re just patching holes.

4. Create Growth Assets That Capture the 97%

Only about 3% of visitors are ready to buy today. The other 97% slip through the cracks unless you have assets to catch them.

That means:

• Your website isn’t just a brochure. It’s a conversion engine.
• Your CRM doesn’t just store data. It nurtures leads automatically.
• Your lead magnets aren’t freebies. They’re bridges, giving prospects a quick win while positioning your paid offer as the next logical step.

If your conversion rate isn’t between 2% and 5% optimize.

5. Measure & Optimize to Ensure Continuous Improvement

Small improvements compound. Track, measure, and iterate on:

• % of visitors who become leads
• % of leads who become opportunities
• % of opportunities who become customers
• Average order value, LTV, CAC, referrals

Marketing is a process, not an event. Get 1% better repeatedly and the compounding effects show up in profit.

As Lotus F1 engineer Colin Chapman put it: “Add power and you go faster on the straights. Remove weight and you go faster everywhere.”

Your MVMS does both. It removes waste such as friction and leaks, then adds power such as lead generation for scale. I'll give you two examples:

Marcio’s Snapshot: Measuring Instead of Guessing

When South African Fast Food chain, Stadium Fast Foods (45-year-old franchise, 16 locations) came to Lean they were spending across radio, social, newspaper and flyers, but they had no database and no way to measure whether their marketing efforts actually worked. Our initial foundational research revealed Stadium were wasting their efforts on media that didn't even reach their target market.

establishing the numbers and a simple system:

• +17% customer growth during an economic downturn
• +12% revenue growth in 10 months
• 5,000-person email database built from zero

The biggest win? Finally being able to measure marketing efficiency turning opinion battles into data-driven decisions.

Plug Your Leaks with an MVMS

You don’t need more water. You need fewer holes.

The MVMS framework gives you:

• Strategy tied to revenue metrics, not vanity
• Conversion systems that plug leaks
• Integrated infrastructure that removes friction
• Growth assets that capture the 97% you’ve been losing
• Continuous optimization so small wins compound

Optimize before you amplify. In fact, across our Accelerator, the vast majority of businesses discover they don’t have a traffic problem, they have a conversion and systems problem. Plug the holes, and you’ll scale faster with less effort and more predictability.

Are you frustrated with your lack of business growth? Does it feel like most days are full, and yet, you’re just not getting the results you want? They certainly don’t reflect the effort you’re putting in? In this article, I’ll explain what the 60-30-10 Rule is and why it’s crucial to your business success. Trust me, it’s a game-changer.

Why Playing to Your Strengths Might Be Hurting You

Business advice often says, “focus on your strengths and delegate your weaknesses.”

It sounds smart, but it’s incomplete. The truth is your business grows at the speed of its biggest constraint, not its strongest area.

If you keep improving what you’re already good at—marketing, product, design—you’re ignoring the choke point that’s actually limiting your growth. This is what I call strength addiction.

It feels productive to polish strengths, but your bottleneck remains untouched, silently strangling progress.

That’s why so many entrepreneurs hit frustrating plateaus, even when they’re “busy.”

The Real Reason Businesses Fail

The stats are sobering:

• Over two-thirds of businesses don’t survive two years.
• Half don’t make it past five.
• Only a third lasts 10 years.

And it’s rarely because of weak demand. Instead, businesses collapse under the weight of operational bottlenecks.

Harvard and McKinsey studies reveal that businesses lose up to 30% of productivity each year due to inefficiencies. More than half of leaders admit bottlenecks are their biggest growth blocker.

Here’s the kicker: most entrepreneurs know their constraints but do nothing about them. Why? Because fixing them usually means working on the area you’re worst at. It’s uncomfortable. It’s also boring.

Entrepreneurs are visionaries. You come up with a new, exciting idea. It’s only natural to want to pursue it. But in chasing the next high, you shift focus, diverting attention away from existing problems.

And while you’re small, these problems seem inconsequential. Until you begin to scale. That’s often where bottlenecks become substantial roadblocks.

The 4 universal bottlenecks that stunt business growth

Every constraint in business falls into one of four categories:

1. Lead Generation – Not enough prospects coming in.
2. Conversion – Leads show up but don’t buy.
3. Operations – You can’t deliver at scale.
4. Retention – Customers buy once but never return or refer.

Be brutally honest: which one is yours? Until you name it, you’ll waste time being “busy” instead of solving the real problem.

Introducing the 60-30-10 Rule

This framework is vital to addressing business constraints. Here’s how it works:

• Spend 60% of your time, money, and focus on fixing your biggest constraint.
• Spend 30% preparing for the next constraint.
• Spend 10% thinking ahead to what’s coming after that.

Simple. By implementing the 60-30-10 Rule, it forces discipline. Instead of chasing shiny objects, you focus on what matters most.

I spent years chasing my next great idea. The experts said, “You need a low-ticket item.” So I introduced one. Then I added a course. After speaking with fellow coaches, I realised they wanted a certification program. So I created it.

But my team was small. And switching between different offers meant we weren’t laser-focused. Instead, our time, money, and energy were scattered, and the results showed.

Since simplifying our offer down to coaching, the business has scaled rapidly.

And every quarter, my leadership team gets together to identify our biggest bottleneck.

It routinely shifts.

For a while, conversion was a major issue. Then, it shifted to churn. Now we’re focusing again on lead generation.

My point. It’s important to routinely revisit what your constraint is.

60%: Attack Your Biggest Constraint

This is where most entrepreneurs drop the ball. They identify their constraint—say, conversion—but still spend 80% of their resources generating more leads.

That’s backward. Strengths don’t limit growth. Bottlenecks do.

If you’re great at marketing but your sales process is broken, every extra lead you generate just leaks out. That’s why you need to pour the majority of your energy into fixing the bottleneck first.

And here’s the kicker: you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Systemization is often the fastest path to removing constraints. I’ve laid this out in 3 Ways To Eliminate The Bottleneck In Your Business: Systemize.

Systemizing gives you leverage, consistency, and freedom from repetitive tasks, so your bottleneck doesn’t come back once it’s fixed.

30%: Prepare for the Next Bottleneck

Bottlenecks are predictable. Once you solve one, the next one is waiting around the corner.

• Fix lead gen → the conversion process becomes the issue.
• Fix conversion → operations struggle to keep up.
• Fix operations → retention shows up as the next constraint.

That’s why 30% of your time and resources should be spent preparing for what’s next. It’s like laying track ahead of the train. You won’t be surprised or overwhelmed when the next bottleneck emerges; you’ll already be building solutions.

This forward-looking allocation is what separates businesses that stall at each stage from those that scale smoothly.

10%: Look Ahead, Think Strategically

The final 10% is reserved for the long game. This is about playing chess instead of checkers with your business.

By thinking two or three moves ahead, you avoid complacency and start anticipating challenges before they appear. This mindset keeps you sharp, strategic, and prepared for growth at every stage.

The Psychology of Avoiding Constraints

As stated earlier, most entrepreneurs are aware of their bottleneck. They just avoid it.

Why? Because it feels better to stay in your comfort zone. If you’re good at marketing, you’ll keep doing marketing, even if the bottleneck is sales. If you’re strong in product development, you’ll polish features, even while operations are falling apart.

But growth only happens in the discomfort zone. As I wrote in Why You Can’t Break Through That Plateau, most businesses stall not because they lack opportunity, but because they refuse to confront the constraint holding them back.

If it feels awkward, you’re probably working on the right thing.

And if you don’t know how to do it, hire an expert who can guide you. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on books, courses, mentor programs, and events to help solve our bottlenecks.

When sales became an issue, we hired sales experts to guide and coach our team on improving our pitch.

When churn became a concern, we attended a Taki Moore event to gain clarity on how to build a better community.

If you want to be successful, address your bottlenecks.

A Real Example: Janet Lee, Paper Paper Co.

Take Janet, who ran a luxury wedding stationery business. She excelled at marketing—Pinterest ads, Meta campaigns, endless content. Her traffic tripled year over year.

But her real constraint was conversion. Her site attracted visitors, but few people requested quotes. She was pouring water into a leaky bucket.

Applying the 60-30-10 Rule, she focused 60% of her energy on fixing conversion. She simplified her quote process, added phone calls, and streamlined her sales follow-up. Within months, her conversion rate skyrocketed.

At the same time, she devoted 30% of her time to preparing operations for growth and 10% to strategic marketing projects. The results? March 2025 became her best month ever, both in terms of invoices and profit.

The Bottom Line

Your business doesn’t stall because you’re bad at everything. It stalls because you avoid the one thing that’s holding you back.

The 60-30-10 Rule forces you to:

• Stop over-investing in your strengths.
• Attack the bottleneck head-on.
• Prepare for the next constraint.
• Stay strategic, not reactive.

That’s how you break through plateaus and build a business that scales predictably and sustainably.

🎧 Want the full framework?

This is just one of the strategies we use in the Lean Marketing Accelerator to help entrepreneurs smash through bottlenecks and grow faster—with less stress. If you’re stuck at a plateau, it’s time to apply the 60-30-10 Rule.

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