What Happens When No One Gives You The Order of Operations

You're not behind because you lack ability. You're behind because nobody explained how the pieces connect.

I want you to meet Linda.

Linda has been working on her business for months. She has a lot to show for it.

She’s got an Instagram account where she spends hours every week thinking about or making Reels. She’s learning about hooks and captions. She knows what b-roll is now and she’s not entirely sure what to do with it but she has a lot of it. She’s been hearing everyone talk about how much they love Canva so she’s in there wandering around and wondering WTH she’s supposed to love.

She’s also got a lead magnet she’s been perfecting for six weeks. It’s almost ready. She just needs to fix the spacing on page three.

She has subscriptions to about twenty things. She’s not totally sure what half of them do but canceling feels risky.

There’s a course in her inbox she bought on Friday because the woman selling it made a lot of sense and the price was going up at midnight. That’s the fourth one this year (it’s only March). She’s going to get to it. She just needs to finish her lead magnet first. Or maybe master Canva. But then there are the b-roll and hooks she’s got to get back to.

Her captions get rewritten until she can’t see straight because posting something wrong feels like walking out of the house with her skirt tucked into her tights. In front of everyone.

Her email list has nine people on it. Five of them are her.

She has made exactly zero dollars.

Linda is not struggling in her business because she lacks ability.

Linda is the ONLY person her entire family calls when something needs to get done. She’s got ability in spades. She’s got aging parents who need more than they’re willing to ask for and less than they’re willing to accept. She’s got kids who are technically adults now but still call her first.

She handles all of it. The parents, the almost-adults, the invisible logistics of an entire family’s life and she does it while being on fire from the inside out approximately six times a day.

Linda is capable of absolutely anything when someone explains how the pieces connect. The problem is that no one has done that yet.

Most people teaching business grew up online. They learned it by doing it before they ever had to explain it, which means when they teach, they skip steps that feel obvious to them, use shorthand that makes sense at age 24, and assume context you were never given. They hand you a dashboard and call it education. Linda’s been handed tools built by people her kids’ age who learned all of this by immersion. They teach it in sixty second videos that skip straight to step four.

Naturally, Linda does what any capable, intelligent woman does when she’s overwhelmed and under-supported.

She opens Instagram. She checks her insights (she has no clue what she’s actually looking at but she wills the numbers to make sense) and replies to any comments. She opens Canva and begins the search to identify the last version of her lead magnet and she changes the colors and fonts again. She swaps out a picture. Pastes in new content that has wrecks her formatting so she concludes she’ll fix it tomorrow. She feels productive. She goes to bed tired.

And somewhere in the back of her mind, the thought creeps in, “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this.”

Linda. I need you to hear me. You are not the problem. Here’s what nobody told you.

There are two important jobs in your business. Marketing and sales. They are not the same thing and you have probably been doing one of them almost exclusively for months assuming it’s what will bring you the results you want.

Marketing is how people find you and start to trust you. It’s your social media. Your videos. Your captions. Your Canva graphics. Your lead magnet. Your bio. All the things you are very busy doing. Marketing says “I exist and here’s what I’m about.”

Here’s what EVERYONE forgot to tell you about marketing: It is a long game and it does not pay your bills. Marketing is about building relationships and funneling the right people to the front door of your business where the sales happen.

You’re out here watching webinars and YouTube trying to deduce how to write the RIGHT caption that leads to a client or purchase. I hate to be the one to break it to you but captions aren’t your problem. Social media is where you help people learn about what you do. You nurture them by showing them how you help. Just because someone hit follow, doesn’t mean they laid out the red carpet for a full frontal sales attack. They clicked a button.

I have a theory about why this happens. It happens because we have hundreds (if not thousands) of creators telling us, “All you need to do is create something in Canva once and sell it on Instagram and make 10K in passive income, easily!”

Now, I’m not saying that they’re lying. Well….maybe I am. BECAUSE they grew up immersed in the online world, they likely already have in place the things that make this possible (a sales system, an audience of thousands, the ability to show up on video and promote their offer without feeling sales-y or overly promotional, and the ability to automate the delivery of the offer among others).

You see how listening to someone who doesn’t know how to operate a rotary phone might not be the person you need to tune into?

Sales is what actually closes the client or brings in the $$.

It’s the systems you have in place to take them FROM social media or your longer form content and lead them to the place where they can get the offer. It’s someone’s landing on a website page and the place they’ll go when they are ready to take the next step: book the call, buy the offer, or learn more. Sales are the systems and strategy you have in place that says “Here’s what I have, here’s what it costs, here’s how to get it, and here’s how to get started.”

If you’re anything like Linda, you’ve been spending time marketing (with a bit of branding) but you don’t know how to connect that to selling.

Yes, you need to understand hooks and captions and Canva. It’s not wrong information. It’s just incomplete. You’re spending too much time on the wrong things assuming they’ll bring in the clients.

Here’s a simple way to sort it out.

Marketing is posting a Reel, writing a caption, building a lead magnet, showing up on Instagram, starting a podcast, writing a SubStack.

Sales are the systems you’ve got to make sales or onboard new clients. They may be sending a weekly email (to MORE than 9 subscribers) with an actual offer in it, inviting people to book a discovery call, putting a buy button in multiple places where people can find it, or telling someone plainly what you sell and what it costs.

Here’s a great list of things that make you FEEL productive but won’t actually bring your clients or close sales:

• Rewriting the same caption six times because the first five didn’t feel quite right.

• Filming three hours of b-roll for a Reel that will be on someone’s screen for eight seconds.

• Researching hooks like there’s a secret sentence somewhere on the internet that unlocks clients.

• Rearranging Canva templates instead of finishing the thing you’re actually trying to sell.

• Tweaking fonts and colors on a lead magnet that no one has even been invited to download yet.

• Learning a new content strategy every two weeks because someone else swears it’s “the one that works.”

• Organizing content ideas in three different apps so you don’t lose them… while still not posting them.

• Checking Instagram insights even though you don’t actually know what numbers matter yet.

• Watching tutorials about how to grow on Instagram instead of learning what you need in place to sell.

• Waiting until the website is finished before letting anyone buy from you.

• Auditing your Instagram to get more followers

If Linda DM’ed me right now and said “Ok I get it, what do I do first?”, I’d tell her to start with her offer.

Get clear on what you’re selling and who it’s for. Then figure out where those people are and how to reach them. Then build the content that brings them closer. Then build an email list that keeps them there. Then make sure your website is optimized to help your audience get the information they need to buy your thing. Then you can develop a logo and your branding but only after you have an aligned audience, offer, and system to sell it.

Most people build it backwards. They’re posting on Instagram before they feel confident in what they’re selling. They are picking out logos and colors before they have an offer OR an audience.

They’ve got the curtains picked out before they’ve laid the foundation.

That thought that crept in before Linda went to sleep? That’s not a sign she’s not cut out for this. That’s what happens when capable people are handed incomplete information and told to figure out the rest.

If you see a little Linda in you, it’s ok. Nobody gave her (or, you) the order of operations. Stop assuming that just because you’ve got Canva and a ring light and a course about hooks, you’ve got a business education.

The pieces connect. I promise they do and if you want someone your age who doesn’t skip steps to walk you through them in the right order, starting with the foundation, this is the place to do that.

I’m so glad you’re here.