If you feel like you don’t have enough leads or your audience isn’t growing fast enough, this episode is going to completely shift your perspective. In this episode of The Real Truth About Business podcast, I’m sharing a series of Back Pocket Insights conversations focused on where your leads are actually hiding and how to expand your audience in a way that supports real revenue growth. This is for service-based entrepreneurs who are stuck in a revenue plateau, thinking they need more visibility when in reality, they’re not fully leveraging what’s already in front of them. After 9 years of experience, I can tell you most businesses don’t have a lead problem. They have an awareness and action problem. Inside this episode, I break down how to identify hidden leads in your pipeline, how to move them through your sales process, and how to intentionally grow your audience.

What You'll Learn:

• Why you already have more leads than you think in your pipeline
• How to identify and activate hidden leads for faster revenue growth
• The biggest mistake service-based entrepreneurs make with lead generation
• How to move conversations into your sales process effectively
• Why audience growth is directly tied to intentional action
• How to expand your network without overcomplicating your business strategy

Episode Highlights:

[00:00] Introduction: Back Pocket Insights and coaching-style episodes

[02:00] Why most entrepreneurs think they have zero leads

[05:00] What actually qualifies someone as a lead

[08:00] How leads are hiding in your DMs, content, and conversations

[12:00] The problem with “friend-zoning” your audience

[15:00] Why you need to give clear next steps in your sales process

[18:00] Expanding your audience through intentional connection

[21:00] Real-life example: building relationships through simple actions

[24:00] Taking responsibility for audience growth

Key Takeaways:

You Have More Leads Than You Think

Here’s what I see constantly. Business owners saying they have zero leads.

After 9 years of working with service-based entrepreneurs, I can tell you that’s almost never true.

If you have:

• People clicking your emails
• Conversations happening in your DMs
• Engagement on your content
• People asking questions

You have leads.

They may not be “ready to buy” leads, but they are in your pipeline. And ignoring them is what slows your revenue growth.

You’re Likely Letting Leads Slip Through the Cracks

Most people only count someone as a lead when they say, “I want to work with you.”

But that’s not how a real sales process works.

Leads are:

• People leaning into your content
• People asking questions
• People showing interest

When you don’t recognize these moments, you miss opportunities to move them forward.

Inside the Focused Visionary Framework, this is a Pipeline problem. You’re generating interest, but you’re not converting it.

You Might Be Friend-Zoning Your Leads

This is one of the biggest mistakes.

You’re having great conversations. Building relationships. Providing value.

But you’re never giving the next step.

So your audience stays stuck in conversation instead of moving into decision.

Clear direction is what turns engagement into revenue growth. Without it, your sales process stalls.

Audience Growth Requires Intentional Action

This is where most people get it wrong.

They look at others and think:

“They have a bigger audience”

“They’re more connected”

“They’re more visible”

But the difference is simple.

They are taking action to meet people.

Just like the example in this episode, people who build strong networks are actively:

• Starting conversations
• Showing up in spaces
• Engaging with others

They are not waiting for people to come to them.

You Are Responsible for Expanding Your Audience

This is a hard truth, but it’s necessary.

If your audience isn’t growing, it’s not because of the algorithm.

It’s because you’re not putting yourself in enough places to be seen.

That could look like:

• Networking events
• Online communities
• Social engagement
• Direct outreach

Business growth requires you to be proactive, not passive.

Small Actions Create Big Momentum

You don’t need a massive strategy overhaul.

You need:

• One new conversation
• One follow-up
• One introduction
• One next step

These small actions compound over time and strengthen your pipeline.

That’s how you create consistent lead generation and move out of a revenue plateau.

Resources Mentioned

• Subscribe to Back Pocket Insights for FREE
• Book a CEO Strategy Call
• Learn more about The Missing Piece Intensive
• Learn more about The Focused Visionary Accelerator
• Download the FREE Lead and Conversion Tracker
• Subscribe to the Sunday Morning Brew Newsletter

About the Host:

Michelle DeNio is a business strategist based in Sarasota, Florida, specializing in helping service-based entrepreneurs break through revenue plateaus using her Focused Visionary Framework. With over 300 podcast episodes and 9 years running her consulting business, she helps coaches, consultants, and service providers scale sustainably through strategic planning, pricing optimization, and sales process development.

Connect with Michelle

1. Website
2. Threads
3. Instagram
4. LinkedIn
5. Facebook

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.

Okay.

I want to keep chatting leads for a second.

So I did.

A couple weeks ago, I opened up my calendar and I offered out to people that I would map out their next k, right?

Or 10k, it didn't matter, right?

But I asked them for simple pieces of information.

So in one of the pieces of information I asked them was, how many leads do you have in your pipeline?

And so many of them said zero.

But here is what I want to talk about today is that we all have leads in our pipeline that we are not accounting for.

I am calling them hidden leads.

And that's what I want to chat with you today is how to find those hidden leads.

Okay.

Because again, like I was just talking about in the episode before this, about pipeline, is that we have this like, really weird mindset for the most part.

A lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, whatever, around looking at somebody as a lead, okay?

But again, we are business owners.

Businesses run on leads, so we've got to stop feeling weird about that.

The six, seven figure earners that you all aspire to and are looking up to and wanting to be in all the things, like, go talk to them.

I can guarantee you they know exactly how many leads they have in their pipeline, right?

And they are looking at people as leads.

And the people on the other end of it are like, please treat me like a lead, right?

So here's my point is that there are leads hiding in your pipeline all over the place.

But for the most part, unless somebody says, I think I want to work with you, we don't qualify them as a lead, right?

And so if you are sitting here thinking like, I don't have any single person in my world right now that has said I want to work with you, so I don't have any leads, I want to challenge you on that.

I really want to challenge you on that because I guarantee you have leads.

If you are doing marketing, then you have leads, and if you don't, then your marketing is not working.

And that's a topic for another day.

And that means you need to book a session with me because something is going terribly wrong.

All right?

But if you have an email list and people are clicking your links, those are leads.

If you have social media and people are hitting you up in the dms, those are leads.

If.

Now, granted, if you're just having friendly conversation, great.

But again, like, even the friendliest of conversations usually turn into business because you're having these beautiful, wonderful conversations that are, you're building this relationship, you're building this friendship.

And if you're holding your authority correctly, they're leads, right?

If you're not, this is why I'm saying, like, really qualify these hidden leads.

Because if not, this is why you're getting friend zoned.

You're getting friendzoned because you're giving it away, right?

You're telling people like, hey, hang out on my dms, let's just continue chatting.

I'm never going to tell you how to work with me.

I'm never going to share with you any further information because we're just friends and then wondering why they hire somebody else, right?

Because you literally put them in the friend zone, okay?

So I really want you to think about, like, who in here am I having really great conversations with?

Who am I who is looking and watching and Lurking on all of my.

My stuff.

Who is commenting on all of my posts, who have I had conversations with in networking or at an event or anything where somebody was like, oh, my God, I think I need to hire you.

This just happened to me a couple different times at an event I was just at.

And most of the time people are like, yeah, I'm here, whatever.

Like, let's do it.

No, when somebody says that to you, you need to qualify them as a lead, right?

Like, even if it's just in passing or like, oh, my gosh, I think I need you in my life, right?

Instead of just saying, like, people might not come right out and say, like, tell me about your offer, but they might go, oh, my God, I absolutely need you in my life.

You know, that's them saying, like, I'm a lead, right?

So that's where I want you to really think about, like, where are you letting these leads slip through the cracks when they're blatantly saying, like, I am a lead, but you're just not hearing right, or you're not seeing it because they're not coming out and saying like, can you send me an invoice?

Or I want to get on a call with you, right?

How many calls have you had?

If you do a lot of networking, if you do a lot of coffee chats, how many calls have you had where you're, like, having this really amazing conversation and people are picking your brain and they're asking questions and you're turning it into this amazing conversation and then you're like, okay, great.

Have a wonderful day, right?

When in reality, they're literally asking you everything that you know you could help them with.

Again, they may not be ready to hire you, but it's your job to know that, like, okay, they're aware of you, they're interested, they leaned in, they.

Asked a lot of questions.

It's now your job to help them consider working with you by putting offers in front of them, by giving them a next step, Right?

But there are so many hidden leads.

If you are doing marketing, you have leads.

If you don't, like I said, then your marketing is not working.

And what?

You're probably not doing marketing.

Okay, sorry.

Not sorry.

I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, but I'm just being honest.

If you marketing.

The whole point of marketing is to draw people in to you.

So if you are marketing your business correctly, you are drawing people into you, all right?

And when you draw people into you, you generate leads.

So go find them.

Look at all of the things that you're doing.

One of the easiest ways that you can do this is at the end of every week, just kind of evaluate all of the things that you did and maybe make a list.

If you don't want to do it weekly, do it monthly, right?

But take the initiative.

Take the time to really sit back and look at your calendar, look at the conversations that you had.

Go back through your DMs.

When I did this just the other day, going back through my dms, I was like, holy shit, I've been having a lot of DM conversations lately.

I need to move those people forward, right?

Like, it's time for them to move to that next step.

So again, it may or may not turn into anything.

People may or may not take your next step, but at least you've offered them.

But again, if you're getting friend zoned, it's likely because you're putting people there, okay?

So go look and find those hidden leads, because they are there.

In your business, everybody's got more leads than they think they do.

They may not be hot leads, right?

They may not be scorching, fricking hot, but they.

They're cool to warm, and you could be warming them up, but with just some very, very simple actions, okay?

So go find your hidden leads.

I've got a life slash business lesson for you today.

So we have neighbors that literally know every single person in our neighborhood, right?

They are extremely social beings, and they have only lived here in our neighborhood for, like, less than six months, okay?

But they literally know more than double, probably triple the amount of people that we know that.

And we've lived here almost two years, okay?

And my husband and I were talking about this, like, oh, my God, how.

Do they know everybody?

Like, they literally know everybody.

And we've literally been here two years, and we don't know anybody.

And I think that we can see this in our business, right?

So I want to tie this directly into a business lesson immediately, is how many times do you, like, look at somebody's audience and think, oh, my gosh, they're connected to everybody.

But here's the lesson.

They're connected.

Our neighbors are connected and know every single person because they make it a point to go and meet every single person.

They're at the pool all the time.

They start conversations with people.

He doesn't like the husband especially extremely social.

He doesn't just sit at the pool and not talk to anybody.

He literally will walk up and say hello to anybody.

He introduces himself.

They go to almost all of the social events that the community hosts.

They have, they're out walking, they talk and say hi to people, but they take initiative, right?

They go and take action and make it a priority to meet the people in the neighborhood.

Right?

They're not just sitting in their house.

And my husband and I, I mean, I work from home, he works out of the office.

We don't go to all of these events.

Now, granted, they're retired, we're not.

But again, we could go to some of the social events.

We just don't.

Right.

We did join the bocce league for that reason because we were like, we've got to start meeting people.

We want to try to extend out our circle a little bit because our circle is very small here in Florida and we.

So we did the things to go and be able to start meeting some of the people.

And I want you to think about that in your business too, of like, how many times do you look at somebody else and think, oh my gosh, their audience is so much bigger than mine, or while they seem to know everybody.

But I want you to really take a step back and I want you to look within.

I want you to really ask yourself,.

What are you doing to go and build your audience?

How are you expanding your audience?

How are you reaching out and meeting new people?

Are you putting yourself in the room?

Are you saying hi to people?

Are you starting conversations?

Just like our neighbor, hey, he literally.

Will start a conversation with anybody.

Okay?

Now I understand that's not everybody's mo, right?

Like, we're not all that extroverted.

We don't have that in us.

But you can do the things to take action.

So maybe that's commenting on somebody's post, maybe that's reaching out to them in the DMs.

Right?

We talk about this all the time.

But my point here in this episode.

Is really sitting down and thinking, what am I doing to go and meet more people?

Right?

Do you need to go and put yourself in a in person networking event?

Do you need to sign up for.

A conference somewhere outside of your area?

Do you need to go and show.

Up to the networking online, right?

Like, do you need to join a.

Community where you can go and meet people?

Like, how many people join communities and then never introduce themselves?

They never interact with people, they never like, make comments, Right?

They just join these communities and then say, well, the community, I'm not meeting anybody.

Right?

But again, like, what are you doing to actually meet the people to create and start the conversations?

That comes down to radical responsibility.

And again, like, when I was sitting.

Here like, oh, my God, how do.

These fricking people know everybody?

And we've literally been here two years and have hardly met anyone.

Well, we've hardly met anyone because we've literally not put ourselves in any position to meet anyone.

Right?

And I see this going on in business all the time is like, it's easy to look at somebody else's audience and think, oh, my gosh, something must have.

They must have gotten lucky.

They've done this, this or this.

No, the only difference is, is that they're taking the action to go and meet the people.

So what do you need to do today?

Where can you go to expand your audience?

How can you start one simple conversation?

Go meet somebody new today.

Start a conversation.

It may not be your ideal fit client.

It may not be somebody that's going to send you a million referrals.

Right?

You don't know.

You have no idea until you open up and start that conversation.

So that's my little tidbit for you today.