🎧 Want more unfiltered strategy and real-time business insight?

Check out Back Pocket Insights, my private podcast community with short, story-driven episodes pulled straight from everyday life and client conversations.

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Let’s be honest. You’ve seen the headlines. “How I made $24K in 10 days.” And most of the time it’s missing context, nuance, and the real strategy behind it. Revenue without transparency creates comparison, not clarity. So today, you’re getting the full breakdown.

In this special behind the scenes episode of The Real Truth About Business, Michelle pulls back the curtain on how she secured $24,000 in recurring revenue in 10 days through a strategic sales sprint for the Focus Visionary Accelerator. She shares what actually converted, what flopped, how relationships played a massive role, and why integrity around deadlines matters. This is not hype marketing. It’s a real look at pricing strategy, pipeline nurturing, positioning shifts, and consistent selling in an online business.

Whether you’re a coach, consultant, OBM, VA, designer, copywriter, or ADHD entrepreneur, this episode will show you how sustainable scaling comes from relationship building, clear positioning, and staying in the sales conversation even when you want to stop.

You’ll learn:

1. The real breakdown behind a $24K recurring revenue sprint
2. Why email strategy and direct outreach mattered more than social media
3. How live events and relationship building accelerate conversions
4. The importance of standing in integrity with price increases and deadlines
5. Why you cannot stop selling just because you hit a short term revenue goal

This is the real truth about business growth, especially for neurodivergent service providers who crave clarity, structure, and results without falling for every trend online.

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Here's your Next Steps:

1. Take the "Where's the Gap in Your Business Strategy" Quiz
2. Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads or Facebook
3. Visit my website to learn more and apply for the Focused Visionary Accelerator
4. Sign up for my newsletter - Sunday Morning Brew - delivered every Sunday at 6 am

About the Host:

Michelle DeNio is a business strategist and growth advisor for service-based entrepreneurs, especially neurodivergent and ADHD business owners. Creator of the Focused Visionary Accelerator and host of The Real Truth About Business podcast, she helps clients simplify, focus, and grow sustainably. With 15+ years in business operations, she’s known for turning big ideas into simple, profitable action plans.

Hey, everyone, I've got a really special episode for you today.

What you are going to be hearing on today's podcast is actually two or three episodes from my private podcast called Back Pocket Insights.

Some of you probably don't even know that I have a private podcast because I don't talk about it a lot.

And that's why I wanted to start sharing it with you guys here on the pod.

This, these episodes are part of my Back Pocket Insights community.

It's my low ticket community.

The link is in the show notes.

You can absolutely jump in on this.

This is like my networking community.

And in addition to the monthly training that we do, I also have this private podcast directly for the members of that community.

And a lot of these episodes are very much driven from questions received inside of the community.

So they're a little bit like private coaching episodes.

And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to bring them on the main pod and just kind of share with you once a month or so some of the most popular episodes from that previous month that the members were loving and talking about and resonating with.

So that's what you're getting today.

I hope you enjoy it.

I would love to see you inside of Back Pocket Insights.

If you want access to these private podcast episodes, if you want to ask questions where you can get your question answered in a private podcast episode, you can do all of that inside of Back Pocket Insights as well as network with a community of over 50 women and, and men.

There's men there too.

And, you know, learn.

There's always a training every single month or some type of challenge or something that we are focused on to move the needle in our businesses.

And so anyways, enjoy these episodes and I will see you and talk to you soon.

All right, let's talk about how I secured $24,000 in revenue in 10 days.

Oh, I freaking hate that.

But I'm going to use it because that's really the truth of it, right?

That's the half truth of it.

But you know, we're going to dot.

I'm going to give you the whole truth about it.

So a little backstory and the beginning of the year, I launched out the Focus visionary accelerator at $250 a month.

Okay, it was $3,000 for the year 12 month program.

Real quick.

Last year it was a six month program, same price, but it was only six months.

And it had a like 90% conversion rate or more.

So and everybody converted to another 12 months.

Right.

So I was like, why would I continue to run this as a six month program when the results and the retainer and the retention and everything is at 12 months.

Okay?

So it went to a 12 month program.

It was $250 a month.

Then I had some conversations and what I wanted to do was bring in not just guest experts, right?

Like here, they're a guest expert.

I wanted to bring in resident experts into my program.

People that would be complimentary to the framework, complementary to the coaching that I was bringing, but in areas that I could not support.

Right?

So first it was a subconscious.

Second is a messaging and there's a couple others that I'm thinking about.

And these are paid experts, right?

And they are coming in not just once, but they are going to be in there at least every other month, if not more, throughout the entire course of the year.

Well, it's ongoing, right.

It's an evergreen program.

But with that, I knew I needed to raise the price because I can't keep.

I wasn't going to keep paying out, right.

I now had a direct expense against the offer.

And so I needed to be able to compensate for that because not only was I bringing in additional value, I mean, and the price could go up anyways.

Like the price needed to go up for the value that it was bringing to the table and what people were getting and the results that people were getting.

Anyways, so I had made the decision that I was going to raise the price after the Fire Horse after the Chinese New Year, okay.

So I had put it on my calendar back in January that I was going to raise the price February 20th.

And I really didn't talk about it much at all.

And then my North Star this year is to be my own best client.

And so with that, I decided, like, if I'm going to be my own best client, I'm going to go and I'm going to do a sales sprint on this one, all right?

I'm going to, I'm going to promote the hell out of it.

Because a people love a good deadline.

People love to get in before a price increase.

And I had some good hot leads and I was like, you know what?

I'm just gonna do it.

So I'm going to break down how I did it, what I did.

I'm going to give you the whole truth, every little thing.

The good, the bad, the, the indifferent, okay?

And I just want to break it all down for you.

All right?

So that's what we're doing.

And I think this is important because again, I could sit here and say, like, I made $24,000 in 10 days.

And that sounds really impressive, and it is.

And I'm not discrediting it.

I am shocked and thrilled myself at the results of this.

Okay.

I never expected to convert this many clients.

All right, so here's how I did it.

So on February 9, I decided I was going to do this sales sprint.

So I literally went into Claude and I was like, I need to sell.

Here's what I've got.

Here's what I want to do.

Here's how I want to do it.

Like, give me a sales plan to follow.

Right?

So first and foremost, I don't want you to think that I don't use AI.

I do because I needed the accountability.

I needed a plan.

I wanted something to start with.

Okay.

So it, you know, through a lot of conversation back and forth, it gave me this plan.

And it was like daily emails and a bunch of posts on social media and all the things.

And I told it that I usually do best by selling through direct outreach.

So we even talked about that.

Right.

So again, I didn't just, like follow the plan.

I customized it to what I wanted to do.

So it gives me out this sales strategy and I start to send the emails.

So I send out an email.

First and foremost, I'm raising my price.

One of the things that I did was I gave people the ability to opt out of all the promotion emails.

I think this is so important to do if you're going to use your email list to promote.

Okay, so it's just.

It was a simple setup in kit where they.

If they click this button and I think it was like a link that brought them to my website.

But I had it set up with a rule that tagged them as an opt out.

Right.

So then every email after that, I just excluded that tag.

So they didn't get the promotion emails.

All right, so that was a way for me to honor my list, to say, listen, I'm going to keep promoting this, but I understand if it's something you're not interested in and you want to opt out.

I think that's really important.

I want to start by also saying I have 574 people on my email list when I started this.

Okay?

So not a huge amount of people.

And actually some of them were people that had just signed up for four on four chats.

And I've never even talked to them.

So I actually excluded that entire group of people because again, they 90% of them are a cold audience to me.

They've never met me.

They just Signed up to a networking event and I didn't want to just start selling them.

Right.

They're getting my Sunday morning brew.

I'm just starting to nurture them.

But I didn't want to just bam, you know, hit them with the sales.

So I excluded them.

So I excluded anybody that.

So those were brand new cold leads to me.

I excluded people that wanted to opt out.

And I still ended up with like 14 unsubscribes.

Not terrible, right?

It's really not terrible.

And the average open rate was about 50%, but my average click rate was very low, like 1% maybe.

And I think the click rate was really coming from people unsubscribing or opting out.

Right.

People weren't clicking the links, although I didn't have a lot of links in there because I wanted people to reply to me.

Okay, so a lot of the emails didn't have a direct signup link.

This is something new.

I'm testing because I really felt like sometimes with the direct signup link, that doesn't work as well.

So I really wanted to encourage people to have a conversation with me.

Okay, so that was the email strategy.

All right.

On Wednesday of.

So the promotion ended on a Friday.

On Wednesday afternoon, I was looking at my email stats.

I was seeing the click rate really low.

I was not seeing any traction from it.

And I was like, you know what?

Maybe I should just cancel.

Maybe I should just cancel these last emails because I don't want to my list off.

I take my email very seriously.

And I was like, maybe I'm just going to cancel it.

And then I get an email back about an hour, maybe two hours later that says, hey, I've been watching from the sidelines.

I think this is exactly what I need.

Can we chat about it on WhatsApp?

Yep.

Because I had sent an email saying if they had questions to hit me on WhatsApp.

So.

So I was like, okay, this is somebody who had never clicked my email.

Right.

Had not clicked the link.

I didn't even know they were on my radar.

So I was like, don't cancel the emails.

So that was like such a good lesson that you just don't know who's watching, who's, you know, who's looking at it.

All right, so I didn't cancel the email.

And then I think it was the next day I got another one of those emails I've been quietly watching.

I think this is exactly what I need.

Can you answer these questions?

I answered the questions.

You said, yep, this is exactly what I need.

And she signed up.

Okay, so 2 of the sales, I ended up selling to eight people.

Okay, so let's break down the $24,000.

It's $250 a month.

Was the.

The program costs $250 a month for 12 months.

It's $2,000 a month in monthly reoccurring.

Revenue over 12 months is 24,000.

Right.

So this is that shit marketing people use, like how I made $24,000 in 10, 10 days.

I secured $24,000 in revenue for my business over the course of Next.

The next 12 months in 10 days.

Okay, I didn't make $24,000 in 10 days.

All right.

I secured $2,000 a month in revenue with eight people signing up for this group program.

Still super impressive.

I'm thrilled about it.

It was.

I'm excited about the energy.

The people are jumping in, they're taking action.

It's all just going.

So.

So what else really went well?

My social media did not, I don't believe, brought me anybody into any conversions.

I really don't believe that.

If it did, it was all silent.

I don't.

I again, it was there for top of mind.

I will say threads is the platform that I hang out on the most.

My follower count did not go up.

My views decreased significantly.

Significantly.

And even now, still I'm having a lot of trouble getting my engagement back up and getting my post seen again.

So it definitely did tank my engagement a bit on the platform.

But again, these are things you have to do, right?

Like a lot of posts don't get a lot of engagement.

It's just part of the.

It's just part of the process.

So, okay, social media didn't convert.

Email only converted to where did the rest of the people come from?

So I had been to an event in January, at the very end of January, and I had met a wonderful group of women.

We went to dinner one night and we had just incredible conversation.

So prior to even leaving that event, I had conversations, conversations with them that I was going to stay in touch right now.

They had identified themselves as leads to me telling me just that they had been thinking about me, they'd been talking about me, they needed me in their life, right?

All these things.

So I had been having some conversation with them.

One of them was actively kind of looking for a coach and I talked to her about it and she was like, no, I really think I need to work more on this, this and this, these other things, whatever.

And so she had kind of told me, I don't think this is for me.

This is not what I need right now.

Okay.

So I tried this other new strategy.

Again, trying new things.

I'm just trying new things.

I learned from a colleague, a fellow coach.

Strategist.

A fellow strategist, not a coach.

She's a business strategist as well.

And she's been hosting.

What she's been calling is private trainings.

Right?

So they're like workshops, webinars, whatever, but they're private, and they're not open to the public, and they're invite only.

So I invited six people to that.

Of the six.

Five.

Four of them showed up.

Maybe five.

I don't remember how many was there.

I think.

I think five of them showed up.

Or maybe it was four.

Doesn't matter.

Okay.

So I did this private training from that.

The one who told me she wasn't interested signed up the next day.

She was like, this is exactly what I need.

Oh, my gosh, I'm missing all of these pieces.

She signed up, and she took immediate action.

She started getting results, like, within, before I even raised the price of the program.

Now, I will be honest in saying the other two of the other ones, she's very good friends with, right?

So the three of them are all very close, very good friends.

They.

They talk a lot.

They communicate a lot.

And so do I believe that helped with the conversion of it.

I do.

I'm not.

You know what I mean?

Of course they're friends.

I mean, I had conversations with all of them.

It's not like they're signing up just because their friend is there.

They all see the value in the program.

They saw the value in my.

My strategy and coaching.

But did it help that they were all friends?

Percent okay.

And then there was another woman that I had met at the event that we had a conversation set up on the calendar of a completely separate conversation that was booked just after the event of, like, let's just jump on a call.

I think I might be able to help you.

Whatever.

She ended up converting.

So there was another one.

Okay, so four of them came from an event.

But the.

The bigger part here is it's not just about the event.

It was about the fact that I built solid relationships with them in a very short amount of time because I really listened to what they were saying, right?

I listened to what they were saying, and I presented a solution to them.

I didn't just sell them.

I said, let me see if I can help you.

Let's jump on a call.

Let's come to this Private training.

Right.

I nurtured them, I showed them, I gave them an experience.

Okay.

So this was a very short conversion time, I mean, considering it was less than a month since I met them to when they converted.

But in that month I had had multiple different conversations with them.

They had attended different.

A training of mine.

Right.

So like a lot of things went into that.

The nurturing, the relationship building.

Okay.

It wasn't just the selling.

All right.

And then two other.

So that was three.

So now we're up to five.

Right.

So two came from email.

Three.

Four came from an event.

So that's six.

Right.

Four came from that event.

And then one of them had done a intensive with me.

So she had done a missing piece intensive back in January and she decided to jump on board because she wants the continued strategy and support, which I think is wonderful and it's an amazing option coming off the intensive.

So she took the work that we did in the intensive, she spent a month executing it and then jumped in because she wanted the additional support and the ongoing strategy.

Right.

Because it's one thing to get it done for a month or, you know, six weeks and then, but it's.

The results will amplify with, with the continued support.

And then the last person that converted was somebody who has been in my pipeline for over six months.

We have had multiple conversations.

She was a one to one candidate, not a group candidate.

Didn't even, wasn't really even considering the group.

And then through this promotion and talking about it more and the additional experts and some additional options, we had a great conversation.

She even was considering maybe a different coach, even though she had been telling me that she was interested in working with me.

Right.

So again, like these things come up and I'm telling you all of this because it was like, I want you to understand and hear that like I didn't just magically secure this money.

Right.

Also, I've been doing this for nine years.

The Focus Visionary accelerator has been running for now, consistently a year and a half, almost two years.

Right.

So there's.

It's not new, Right.

I've been talking about it.

What is new though is the positioning of it.

I changed the positioning of the Focus Visionary accelerator to focus on three core pillars, which is pricing, pipeline and sales.

Because that is what I found.

I was helping people with the most.

Yes, I deal a lot with the facts over emotion.

We do a lot of tracking, we look at the data, we, we, you know, develop their North Star.

All of those things are incredibly important.

But if they don't have their pricing and their pipeline and their sales strategy figured out.

The rest of it doesn't really matter.

Right.

Like, you have to have those three core foundations.

So I did change the positioning of it and I do believe that helped.

Right.

The facts of the matter are saying it did help.

So that's, that's the behind the scenes on the launch.

Okay.

So I did daily emails, multiple times a day, posting on social media, multiple direct conversations, both in email and WhatsApp, on Instagram, Facebook.

Like, I had a lot of direct one to one conversations, relationship building.

And you just never know who's watching.

Because I did have those two people who I did not realize were even interested in fba.

They were both members of Back Pocket Insights, but I didn't know that they were even considering FBA if I'm, you know, I had no, no inclination that they were considering that.

So that is just a little bit of behind the scenes.

Now I will also tell you that on Monday morning I woke up to an email of, hey, my life finally just come down.

I think I can, you know, I'm finally above water.

Did I miss out?

And my answer to her was, yes, she did.

Okay.

And I have a lot of empathy for people that life is just handing them, you know, life.

Right.

We talk about that all the time.

Life is lifing.

And as much as I want to say to her I get it, I can absolutely still get you in at the lower rate.

The 250 won't.

And I didn't because I do not want to compromise my integrity.

Okay.

Yes, it was a short Runway.

Yes, it was a 10 day.

But I had also had multiple, I've had multiple conversations with this person.

We have talked about multiple different options.

And so is there another option out there for her?

Absolutely.

Will I work with her?

Absolutely.

Will she get the $250 price point?

No, because there were people that literally signed up on Friday because they didn't want to miss out on that.

And you know, even though maybe like a Monday sign up would have been better, but they, they literally signed up on Friday because they knew the price was going up.

And I have to stand in integrity on that and honor that and I will not compromise that.

Okay?

So yes, it sucks.

And yes, I have to have that conversation.

But I also had somebody else who is another very warm lead that I was having personal conversation with, like a direct conversation with on Instagram.

And she was.

Had another big life event on Friday and she said to me, I don't have the time or space to think about this right now.

And I understand that that means I might miss out on the lower price and.

But that's okay.

When I'm ready, when life settles down a little bit, I will happily pay the higher price.

I love that you're leveling up and I love that you're bringing these experts in and every, you know, I will happily can pay that.

And I was like, okay, so again, you know what I mean?

Like you have to stand in integrity on that and you can't, you can't compromise it.

If you're going to run a deadline type sale, you have to stick with the deadline.

So anyway, that's where I'm at with that.

I just wanted to give you kind of a behind the scenes look at it because I think most people don't, they just talk about like how much money they made.

Right.

But here's the other thing that's really important and this is again me being my own best client.

Typically in the past if I had done something like this and gotten eight new clients, I would have stopped selling.

I would have been like, I'm good, let me coast, let me onboard these clients.

Let me just go like I secured this reoccurring revenue like I'm good.

But here's the thing, I'm not, I'm not good.

Like I'm good, I'm happy, I'm thrilled, I am absolutely fricking thrilled.

But I'm not going to stop selling.

Right?

I'm going right into, I'm going to keep talking about my missing piece intensives because I still have one to two spots a month available for that, depending on the month.

I think the intensive is an absolutely incredible freaking offer and I love it.

Like I've got another one I'm doing and I just love the power of the fast of it.

I'm not going to continue, stop talking about FEA even at the higher price because again, the higher price is reflective of the additional value and the value that is, you know, the results that are happening inside of that program.

So with more people, that's just more results.

So of course I'm going to continue to promote that.

Right.

And so that's the thing.

I don't necessarily love being in launch energy.

This was deadline specific.

Specific.

It did work really well.

So will I try to find a way to create additional deadlines in the future?

Not necessarily price increase, but yeah, people do love a little bit of urgency.

They do like having deadlines and so I will probably do that again.

But what is more important Here is again, being my own best client, I am not going to stop selling.

I still have leads in my pipeline that didn't convert into this.

Like I just told you I had, I have a couple that are, that still have not converted, that are still very warm leads.

So again, I'm not stopping, right?

This was just a, like, let me run this sales sprint.

Let me see what I can do.

And it worked very well.

But I'm also going to continue to sell and promote and all of those things.

And I, I'm just unapologetic about it this year.

Yes, there's seasons where I will be more invisibility, but here's the thing.

I nurture people to the nth degree.

Naturally.

I don't ever feel like I don't.

And so I am going to sell.

Right?

And I think that is what is important to hear also is like, this doesn't stop.

And the reason this was successful is because I didn't stop selling, even though I wanted to.

I wanted to cancel those emails.

I wanted to stop following up.

Right?

But I didn't.

And I ended up having such a beautiful outcome.

Right?

So that's what's so important here.

And I want you to really think about that and remember that.

So if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Please shoot me a DM on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp.

If you have me connected on WhatsApp, I'm happy to answer any further questions, but I want to start sharing more of the behind the scenes with you guys.

So that is what is happening.

All right, I'll talk to you soon.

Go sell something.

Go sell something.

You know you want to.