I recorded this as an Instagram Live and a podcast episode at the same time, so you’ll hear me talk to both audiences throughout — but that’s also what gives this episode its live energy.

In this episode, I’m walking you through three reasons your business growth feels harder in 2025 than it used to, what’s actually missing, what to do instead leading up to 2026, and how we are doing this inside Reclamation in Q4.

These are the things that worked in the beginning but eventually stop working — and if you’re feeling like your results aren’t matching your effort anymore, this will help you understand why.

Here’s what I cover:

1️⃣ Selling through likability and referrals but not converting new people (cold leads)

This is where most of us start. You get clients because people like you and trust you as a person — not necessarily because your offer was super clear, but because they knew you or someone referred them.

That can work for a few years, but eventually you run out of warm leads.

What’s missing:

You need to be able to convert cold leads — people who find you on a Tuesday and pay you on a Wednesday. That comes from thought leadership (not just problem-solution content) and messaging that’s anchored in your clients’ words, not yours.

2️⃣ Solving your business problems through content only vs. lead gen and marketing

In the early days, your audience might have grown just by you posting content or through word of mouth. But at a certain point, that stops working — not because you’re doing something wrong, but because the algorithm and your audience have changed.

What’s missing:

Lead generation, not just audience growth. They’re not the same thing.

You need visibility beyond your own platform — third-party credibility that centers your expertise and thought leadership so new, qualified people are finding you consistently.

#1 (Cold leads) and #2 (lead gen) go together.

3️⃣ Delivering results that are bigger than what you’re charging for

This one can be sneaky because it still feels like success — you’re fully booked, but something feels off. Your expertise has outgrown the people you’re serving.

What’s missing:

You need to start talking to your best clients, not all of them.

That might mean solving a higher-level version of the problem or introducing a higher-level way of thinking about it.

Recap: Three things that make your growth feel harder than it used to:

• Selling through likability and referrals but not converting new people (cold leads)
• Solving your problems with content vs. lead gen and marketing
• Delivering results that are bigger than what you’re charging for

And what’s missing:

• The ability to convert colder leads through thought leadership and messaging anchored in your clients’ words
• Lead generation and third-party credibility beyond your own platform
• Talking to your best clients and positioning your work at your current level of mastery

Reclamation Mastermind will help you solve all three of these before the end of November — through a series of Demand Gen done-with-you workshops we’re running inside the program this quarter.

Doors close TONIGHT, October 9th at midnight, and we start the week of October 20th.

Apply and schedule your call now at the link below:

www.marieladelamora.com/reclamation

I am doing a podcast recording and a live at the same time. I wanted to talk about three reasons people feel like business growth is harder than it used to be and why that is.

Now there's lots of factors that could be at play here, right? Like I think about how if you started your business five years ago, you've already seen your business through a pandemic. You've already seen it through changes in economy. You've already seen it through technology changes, like so many things, right? So for any business to continue to thrive, you are going to have to adapt to like no matter what, right? Like what got you here won't get you there.

anything in this live sounds familiar to you because these are, this is part of the gaps that we fill and part of like a lot of the work that we do upfront that we're actually gonna be doing in the first six weeks of the program so that this isn't just concepts, you have to go figure it out on your own, like we're actually going to do this together in the mastermind. So everyone who's already in the mastermind, we're gonna revisit it. If you're joining new, you're gonna do this with us between the third week of October through November.

⁓ And this live and this podcast episode that I'm recording right now is brought to you by reclamation mastermind doors closed October 9th at midnight. So schedule your call so three reasons that business growth feels harder than it used to one is that You realize like you did certain things to start your business and some of them

are normal things that we all have to do because we only have so many resources. A lot of the times you're starting a business and you haven't worked with a lot of clients at all. So you're kind of the way that you build it is not necessarily the way that you maintain it. A lot of people's earlier clients tend to come from like their network. Also, if you grew your business years ago, the way that social media platforms pushed your content out is not the same as how they're doing them now.

Right? So now it's a lot more like interest based content before you kind of could post anything. Like if you look back and if you've been in business for a few years, like your content was just pushed out differently. So you could just be on one platform post and like people would discover you things would work. Right? So I, and it's important to note this because you, if you're willing to be in business for the rest of your life, if this is your thing, there is no way that you aren't going to.

operate through, live through, pivot through, adapt through changes in technology and social media landscape, in the economy and political landscapes in your life and how you feel there's always going to be changes. And that's what I want to talk to you guys about. So especially as we're heading into Q4, which I have found historically with myself and my clients that in Q4, it's a lot of the times like it's one of the biggest like buying seasons in terms of people really look at like

where they are relative to where they thought that they were gonna be at the end of the year, they're starting to think about like where they're frustrated, they're starting to look around and like either make their investments or plan their investments, which is why the shifts that I'm gonna talk to you about today are so timely because you really could put yourself in a position where you're swooping in and you are activating people that are already in your current audience. It doesn't mean you have to completely reinvent stuff. Like these are really significant shifts but not complete overhauls, right?

One of the very first things that used to work and doesn't generally work anymore is selling through likability and through referrals, but not being able to sell to like brand new people like cold leads. Now this is where most of us start. You get clients because people like you or they've heard about you. They like you as a person, therefore they trust you, right? And,

It may not even necessarily be because your offer was super clear. I actually think that a lot of us look, if you look back, like your offer wasn't really clear and it didn't matter because the people who ended up working with you had some sort of like degrees of connection between they knew someone you worked with or they liked what you were about. And that was enough for them. And I think that's great. Like we don't want to overcomplicate business at the beginning, but eventually selling through like ability and referrals will start to look like

It takes a really long time for people to say yes. You'll notice that people will say, I've, I really like what you're putting out or like, I'm meaning to work with you or you get a lot of like one days or some days. or you feel like there has to be tons of touch points. Like somebody has to like meet you or they have to talk to one of your clients or they have to all of these different things. You won't as often here. Like I just found you and I am ready to work with you. Right? So that's kind of how you know.

you've reached a point where like, it takes a really long time to sell through likeability, to be honest, and it's just very unclear. And I think that it's great to have that. It's great to have a brand where people are like, I like what you're about. But someone who's a cold lead is going to naturally be more discerning. They're going to be like, it kind of doesn't matter if I like you. Like I may like you, but like, what are you about? How is this different? Do I need this right now? Is this the right investment for me to be making?

And it's funny because I think about how proud I am about like over the years when people apply for a reclamation, I will hear less and less reasons that are about me. And that's on purpose because I'm like, you can think I'm great, but that doesn't necessarily mean someone's going to come pay me $10,000 for a mastermind. Like they care. Can you help me with my business problem? And how do I know that? So I have had to elevate the way that I sell because the first couple of rounds

It was people who had been following me for years, who knew me personally, who knew my clients personally. I couldn't continue to sell that way. I couldn't just continue to sell on those things because if you didn't know who I was, you'd be like, I don't care. Like, can you help me? Yes or no. And here's my problems. And so you have to be able to shift eventually out of selling through like personal relationship, like ability, referrals, second degree connections, things like that.

to know on purpose how to create demand from cold leads, which means somebody finds you on a Tuesday, on a Wednesday, they're applying to work with you, and on Thursday, they're paying the invoice, right? And that can happen even if you have a higher ticket offer. So how you make this shift, okay, is that at this point, you need to shift out of problem solution, which is where we start to keep it simple. We don't want to get too deep. You have to shift out of problem solution.

And instead you need to start to get clear on what's your thought leadership around this problem solution, meaning what is missing for them? Why is it missing for them? What have they been trying? Like all the things and how you solve for that differently and better because of who you are and because of your skills. How do you solve for that unmet need, that gap? You have to start speaking to a gap and you need to start thinking about like, what is it that they're actually saying, ⁓ in their words, not your words.

So this is the thing how like at the beginning, unclear messaging, you can still make money. But later, once you've worked with clients, you have so much information about what are they actually saying? If you were to like read their mind, like they're literally telling you some of this stuff on sales calls, on their applications. At this point, like we got to get out of like our hearts and our vibes and our intuition and be like, what are the actual words?

that they are saying because a person who likes you, you could be off. They'll still want to work with you. A person who knows you has heard about you. You could be off. They're still going to want to work with you. Somebody who legit just found you and is like, what is this person about? They're going to be like, I'm not really thinking that I'm not really doing that. I'm not really saying that. So part of what you have to do at this point is have a system for anchoring your marketing into your clients words, not yours.

And there's a difference. There's like marketing language and then there's the language that somebody uses after they've worked with you. This is like a doctorate collegiate level and then they're over here and it's freshman year and they're like, what are you talking about? So a lot of this is like looking at your applications, looking at what people say at the beginning of a sales call, what people put in their onboarding forms. What are the actual words? You need to not just rely on your own brain for this and your own thoughts for this. You need to have a database.

of their actual word. So part of what we do in Reclamation is you take all of your client applications and your onboarding forms. I created a custom GPT for this that you plug in so that this custom GPT becomes a client expert. It becomes a marketing expert. So you can say, here is all of the data. I don't need to keep this in my brain because this is too much. We don't want to rely on our brains. If I were to speak to five things my clients are,

trying right now that aren't working, what would those be? Like we gotta anchor those in. So that's what takes somebody, it shifts you out of selling to people who know you and like you and been following you a long time to being able to convert cold leads. And that's important. Any business owner needs to do that. That's what cuts down buying time from like, they've been following you for a year or two to, you know, being able to convert people faster. And really it also makes your marketing more helpful. So that's strategy number one is.

Strategy that you would eventually outgrow is selling through likeability and referrals and you need to be able to convert a Brand-new person and that requires you to sell differently. So this the strategy there is thought leadership not just problem solution and Having your messaging that's anchored in what they are saying not what you are thinking meaning. What are their symptoms? What is their experience? What are their words not your diagnosis? They're not thinking that they're just thinking and where they are

The second strategy that eventually stops working and it's why your business growth feels harder than it used to is that you eventually cannot solve your business problems through content only. And I will see this a lot and people, you know, they'll go and get coached even, and then they'll just get coached on their content. And that's great. However, that doesn't address the fact that sometimes the problem isn't content.

sometimes your growth has slowed because the algorithm changed and now it's not getting pushed out to the people who need it, or your audience matured, or like you just haven't done lead generation in a long time, right? So we have to look at also like who's actually in your audience now and are they qualified for your offer? Because it isn't just numbers, right? So we have to be able to take a step back. And if you're posting, posting, posting, posting, posting, and like you're not,

Seeing an uptick, we also have to look at like, how do you, when is the last time that you grew your leads? How did you do that? And we don't want to just do that in generic places like Instagram, because to be honest, depending on what you're selling, if you're not selling something low ticket, I wouldn't recommend just using IG or TikTok or whatever to grow your audience. Like I also think about being in rooms where your ideal people already are. So the way you know, you're here is like the same people will register for your stuff. The same people will engage in your stuff.

you're getting followers, but they're not buying. ⁓ You can't name ways that new people are finding you. If I'm like, how are new people finding you? And you're like, Instagram. I'm like, yeah, no, we need at least two ways that brand new eyes are finding you at any given point. And at the beginning, you don't have to do that. Or if you started your business years ago, you also probably didn't have to grow your audience on purpose because the way that content was pushed out was different. Now you have to do lead generation.

on purpose. You need to do audience, not just audience growth, but like lead generation, because not all audience growth is created equal. So what you need to start doing differently now, and I personally have experienced this as somebody who in the early days of business, I didn't have to try. It's like I wasn't trying, but now you actually do have to on purpose say, where are my people at? Where are my people at? And where am I putting my brand in the pathway of

brand new eyes of brand new visibility and not just anybody but people who are qualified leads. So that's a different question that maybe you didn't have to ask before but eventually you do need to do this. So what's missing here is visibility beyond your own platform especially if you sell high ticket meaning this is beyond let's say posting to YouTube or posting to TikTok or somewhere where there's ⁓ like better SEO or higher visibility. What you actually need at a certain point is on purpose say

what rooms, what brands, what platforms, what vehicles exist that my people are at where I can lend my expertise and I can go fill a gap in those places. The reason that this is so effective and so lucrative is because number one, you aren't just going from scratch and just relying on audience growth on your own platform. The second thing is that whenever anybody sees you or hears you share your expertise,

on another platform, your current audience, their perception of you is going to go up. And this new audience is going to trust you more because there's borrowed trust from the platform where you are featured, which is why I would advocate not just for being on platforms that are SEO friendly or having a YouTube channel or whatever. And I think those things are great if you have the resources to do it, but not everybody does. If you're a solopreneur and you don't even have a VA, it might be harder for you to be on multiple platforms.

but you can do third party credibility, visibility on other people's platforms, which is essentially it's third party credibility. And in order to do that, you can't just have like janky pitches and just being like, hey, I wanna be on your podcast. there's a strategy for that, which I teach in reclamation, which really has to do with like what's the thought leadership and the topics that you really wanna be known for that you can bring to a platform and what gap are you filling in their audience? Because essentially nobody's gonna want you on if you aren't.

serving their audience because this isn't about you, right? But also when you have clear thought leadership, you actually get approached. People will say, I heard you talk about this. I saw you say this and they'll quote you and they will invite you on. So this is also how I'm like, we aren't just always solving our business problems through content. Sometimes it's what we're saying and where we're saying it. Okay. So to recap, solving your business problems through content only is an expired strategy. It's not always going to work.

A lot of the times it's what you're saying and where you're saying it. And a big part of that is third party credibility, growing your audience through aligned platforms and sharing your expertise on those platforms where your people already are. It both activates your current audience in terms of trust and credibility. And it also taps into rooms where your people already are. So you don't have to work so hard to create your own audience from scratch all the time. And you also will grow your audience by doing that, right?

⁓ good. I'm so happy. Okay. ⁓ so the third thing and also the thing with strategy one around cold leads and strategy two around lead gen is they go together. Cause if you have messaging that can convert cold leads and you're doing lead generation, guess what's going to happen is that's how a person finds you on a Monday and pays you on a Tuesday. Legit. Like, and that has happened and that can happen. Right? So it doesn't always have to be a long route.

There are things we can tweak and connect that can help you to spike your demand without overhauling your business. Third thing, third reason that your growth feels harder than it used to is you are delivering results that are bigger than what you're charging for. Okay, I'm gonna explain what this means. So at the beginning, we charge.

What we feel like we can, we're like, okay, my belief has to be here. I don't want to like spin myself out. I want to feel confident about charging this. eventually what happens is you get really good at what you do. Your clients get better and better results. You really think about it you're like, damn, I do this with my clients all the time where I'm like, okay, let's talk about your results. And they're like, and I'll look at them and I'm like, wait a minute, this, look at what people are saying about you. And they're like, yeah, I know, I don't know. But like, if they're not owning it,

They're not talking about it and like their identity hasn't caught up with the the the results that they've created. And so what happens is like you are so brilliant in your way up here and your results are way up here and you're not talking about them and and also like your prices. You don't believe you can charge more even though your results are up here. And granted, you need to have demand to raise your prices. But like what kind of happens here is that

people get stuck talking to almost like a level of client they've outgrown. So it's like they have these great clients and then they also have clients that they feel like they have to convince and they have to, you know, they're struggling. And eventually what happens with all of my clients, especially when you're selling high ticket is like, you have to start talking to your best clients, not all of them. So if you imagine them all sitting in this arena, like everybody that you've ever worked with, I think what we do sometimes is we think about like,

who has been the hardest to convince, who's had the biggest objections, like who was the hardest selling, you imagine that person versus the people who either had a higher level problem or like a higher level thinking. And when you start envisioning them, what naturally happens is everybody else either rises to that level or they don't. And so a big part of this is like, you have to see yourself as somebody who...

can serve clients that maybe even give you little bit of imposter syndrome. Sometimes I'll see this from my clients. It's almost like they're talking to elementary problems, but in reality, they're in college. And so without realizing, they're going with convincing energy rather than talking to people who are already qualified, don't need to be convinced. It doesn't mean not explaining the offer, but...

It's just a slight change in almost like the way that you lead with like thought leadership, right? So how you know you're here is You're still getting price objections Even though your result is way up here you are you know that you're delivering like life-changing results that are so much bigger and You feel like you've become like ⁓ the go-to person for like entry-level people But then there's clients you've worked with who you're like damn if I could have ten more of them Like I would love my business. So you're actually working with people who?

Half of them you kind of dread and you're just like, this feels so hard. And then there's clients who you've absolutely loved working with and you just don't believe that you can have all of them just like that. So if I were to ask you the question, I've asked my clients this, which clients have you worked with where you would want 10 more of them? You wouldn't be scared to grow. And what's stopping you from talking to them? And a lot of the times it's that like, this feels like it's too advanced. Like, I just don't know that people see me as that person. But in reality they already have because they already worked with you.

So this is just allowing yourself to evolve because these clients are not gonna have price objections. You also are going to be talking to a slightly more sophisticated problem and a sophisticated person with a higher level of thinking and they don't need convincing. So sometimes it might feel like you've outgrown your clients but you're not allowing yourself to grow beyond that. So what's missing, like I said, is starting to talk to your best clients. Imagine them in the front row.

Versus trying to convince people to get in their seats the people who are trying to get popcorn the people who are out in the streets Talk to the people in the front row Right, and you can do that by imagining the past people that you've worked with where you're like what made them such a good fit What about them and how could you speak to that person? versus the basic elementary convincing energy That's also what makes business feel hard and at first you do that because you feel confident doing it

But eventually you really know your shit and you just have to allow yourself to evolve. ⁓ So to recap three things that are making your growth feel harder than it used to. Number one is that you used to sell through personal relationships, likeability, referrals, but you're not converting cold leads and you need to know in your messaging, like how to do that. Number two is you need to shift from

problem solution content to thought leadership content and solving and knowing that not all of your business problems can be solved with content. Like we need to get out of what if it's not a content problem? What if it's what you're saying and where you're saying it? And the third strategy or the reason that you growth fills harder than you used to is that your results have outgrown what you're charging but your identity hasn't and your pricing hasn't and your messaging hasn't. And these are all shifts that like I said, they don't

require you to totally overhaul it. A lot of this has to do with how you see yourself first and giving yourself that permission to evolve and be that expert that you already are. Be that expert people have literally already paid you to ⁓ and not letting yourself get stuck in like who you were at the beginning of business, what you were doing at the beginning of business, putting yourself out there, believing that you deserve to be seen and heard on platforms outside of yourself that you deserve and are worth.

charging more money, right? That people care about how you think, not just what you do. That's a big thing as well, is that at the beginning, it's like, hey, I can help you solve this problem. Hey, I can help you get this outcome. But eventually, people want, they care about how you think. They're interested in how you think. They wanna know your lens. They're like, and letting yourself start to talk to that, that's how you market like a thought leader versus just problem solution where you could.

There could be like a dime a dozen, a lot of people solve this problem. No, they don't. Not when you start to allow yourself to sell through thought leadership and say, here's my lens, here's what I see, here's what I think is missing, here's how I solve this differently, here's my standards, here's my values. Those things matter. Even if you're a service provider, you don't have to be a coach. You can be a service provider, you can be an agency owner. It's almost like shifting out of problem solution and more in selling your way of thinking. And like I said, I have clients who are agency owners. I have clients who are done for you providers.

service providers, and that is available to everybody in all forms of business. I actually think for service providers, ⁓ you see it even less, to be honest, because I think it's so much about like, here's what I'm delivering and here's what I'm helping you with. ⁓ So those are the shifts again. So what you actually need instead and what's missing is the ability to go from selling through like ability and trust and referrals and relationships to selling to cold leads.

through thought leadership and having messaging that's anchored in their words, not yours. The second part is expanding beyond just trying to tweak your content and instead lead generation through other people's platforms. Third party credibility, that's going to activate your people and it's also going to dream people into your world. And the third is allow yourself to evolve and talk to your best clients, not all of them. That's going to get you out of convincing energy. So.

What I decided to do to make this easy is that in the next six weeks in Reclamation, we're actually going to be doing this together so that you don't join and then you have to go figure it out for yourself. So we have four workshops that I'm going to be running from October 23rd through right before the Thanksgiving break. And we're going to talk about high ticket messaging. We're going to talk about ⁓ how to actually expand beyond your own platform and what are those topics that you want to be known for. We're also going to create your

custom GPT brain bank that has all of your client data on there. So you don't have to guess like we're literally, I'm going to give you some homework. You're going to download language that you have, what clients have said, whether those are applications or onboarding forms or whatever that is. And we're going to create this database for you that you can talk to chat, GBT and say, what did my clients say? What are they actually saying? What are some topics that I can come up with to help them with this? So you get yourself out of your head. So your marketing is like,

sharp like they're gonna be like damn I'm literally thinking that right now right so ⁓ we're gonna do those things together so you don't have to guess right so if you saw yourself in any of this it means you're serving clients it means you've been around you know what mean like you didn't just start your business like this year it's okay if you spent a few years and you feel like I'm still figuring it out that's totally fine that feels like that for a lot of people

If you're not sure you want to schedule a call, my job is to answer your questions to let you know whether you should because I'm very clear on who Reclamation is for versus if I could help you in another offer, if we can work together in Telegram coaching, or maybe we don't work together and I just help you and I answer your questions. I'm...

me to do all of that. Just know my damns are open. Message me. Send me what your biggest questions are right now. What are the things that feel like you're hitting a wall? Is there something that I taught today or talked about today that you're like, wait a minute, what does this look like for me? Right. So message me because application for, reclamation, closed after tomorrow night.

And I want to give you all the information that you need to make a decision about whether it's a fit for you, whether you want to apply. I will always be honest with you. This is not going to be a sales pitch. It's an advisory session. I treat all of my conversations as advisory sessions, as if I am your coach already. I treat every person as if, if I was already your coach, whether you were working with me or not, here's what I see, here's what I advise and here's why.

Let me know what your biggest growth issues are. What are the things that you're sitting in right now? Your biggest unanswered questions. I am the person you go to for all of your unanswered questions. All the things that you're like, I got told this and then I joined this program and then I'm so confused and I've been trying this. Why? Because I love to debunk stuff because I'm a marketer. So I can explain to you literally any question that you are sitting on right now. I can explain to you why did that make sense for the person who told you? Why did that make sense for the person it worked for and why it's hard for you and why it's not working for you? I can literally

try me, there's no question you can ask me that I cannot answer because I know my shit because I literally did this for 16 years before I started a business as a business coach and as a leadership coach, right? So that's why when clients come to me, they feel like it makes sense. They will never buy another program that sells them a tactic. They get out of this consumption loop of somebody has the right strategy because like they, when they renew with me, they are solving new problems.

you are going to become a smart ass marketer. Nobody's gonna be able to get over on you, okay? I hope this was helpful for y'all, so.

Thank you, thank you so much to everybody who joined.

applications close tonight Thursday, October 9th. So apply, schedule your call with me on the call. You are going to walk away with more clarity.

Join me at Reclamation Mastermind, send your application in before doors close. I would love to meet you and I will see you in the next episode and hopefully inside Reclamation.