🎧 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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Your experience didn’t start the day you opened your business. But too many service-based entrepreneurs act like it did. You downplay your past careers, your corporate background, your hands-on experience, and then wonder why prospects don’t fully trust your authority. Your credibility didn’t magically appear. You earned it long before you ever sold your first offer.

In this special episode pulled from the private Back Pocket Insights podcast, Michelle shares two powerful reminders. First, how your previous career experience shapes your expertise, authority, and business strategy today and why you need to start talking about it. Second, a direct conversation about nurturing relationships the right way and why only showing up when you need clients is sabotaging long-term growth. If you want sustainable scaling in your online business, this is required listening.

Whether you’re a coach, consultant, OBM, VA, designer, copywriter, or ADHD entrepreneur, this episode will help you lean into your real experience and build relationships that create long-term trust, loyalty, and recurring revenue.

You’ll learn:

1. Why your previous career experience is a massive credibility asset
2. How to position your background to strengthen your authority
3. The difference between transactional networking and real nurturing
4. Why only engaging when you need clients damages trust
5. How consistent relationship building creates long-term business growth

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 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.

Hey, bpiers.

All right, I want to chat today about utilizing, like, reflecting back on what got you here.

So one of the things that I've.

Been really reflecting on lately is my.

Previous career in corporate manufacturing.

Electrical engineering.

Engineering and manufacturing.

Right.

Because.

And this was a conversation that I was having with another business strategist who also had a pretty prominent career prior to becoming a business strategist in the online space.

Right.

And so I think what I'm talking about here is like, when I was in my corporate engineering, I was quite literally responsible for every single order that came in our door from the moment it came in the door to the second it left.

I mean, I'm talking like through sales, through purchasing, through engineering, through production, shipping, accounting.

Right.

Everything I was responsible for managing all of our inventory.

It was like over $2.1 million worth of inventory with parts as low as, like, less than a penny to, you know, 25, 35, $4,500 parts, okay?

And then, you know, managing cash flow.

Which vendors get paid?

When do they need to get paid?

Which vendors need to get paid so that we can buy more product?

Because we have this job and this client is a priority.

You know, prioritization of like top clients versus like clients that ordered once a year.

Like, I'm talking like all these moving parts, right?

Like accounting, payroll taxes, hr, everything to making sure sales and engineering were at each other's faces.

And like, when sales sold something, we could get it through to engineering to design it, and engineering could get it to production in a way that they could actually build it.

I mean, these are the things, right?

Like all of these things and all of these skills.

Not to mention, in a previous life, I was a hairdresser, which brings in all of the nurturing skills, the client retention skills, the relationship building skills, right?

Because hairdressers can be amazing, but if they don't, don't build a relationship with their client, like, the loyalty's just not there, right?

And so my point here is this, is that I think we forget about it and we don't talk about it and we don't bring it up, but there's so much, I don't want to call it hate, but there is a little bit of hate going on in the online space right now about.

Because so many people got burned by people that came into the business world that really didn't have those skills, that didn't have that corporate, like, whether you had corporate background or not.

But it's like people that didn't have skills that started a business business, and they don't have a ton to back it up with, and then people got burned, right?

And so I do think that really kind of talking about your background a little bit is going to be very beneficial in attracting clients to you.

Because I think there are a lot of people that want to know that.

It's like that you've.

You've been around the block a little bit, right?

Per se.

And I don't mean that negatively, but it's like, yeah, no, I didn't just decide to become a business strategist.

I didn't just duplicate somebody else's efforts.

Like, the knowledge and skills that are in my head are things that I learned by working in a business that we literally grew year over year from.

I don't even Remember where we started, but like when I left, we were like a $5 million.

I mean, when I started there, we.

I don't even know if we were a $1 million company, right?

A manufacturing and I don't even know where they are now that might have even been.

I can't even remember.

It was so long ago.

I don't remember.

But there was exponential growth, right?

But with that growth became all of this business development.

It came process improvement, it came, it became team member, like shifting, right?

Like, all of the skills that I utilize and teach in the way that I created my focus visionary framework was all created through the lens of like understanding what it's like to be on the consumer end, right?

But also the skills that I knew were needed to grow and develop a business in a sustainable way.

Because when you have that much inventory and that much cash flow and that many accounts payable and accounts receivable and all of that, you can't run it on a really good month and then a shit month and a really good month and a shit month, right?

Like, you need to build in stability, you build in reoccurring clients.

That's where this reoccurring revenue model, you know, like all of these things came from, that background.

And I don't know that I've ever honestly talked about it.

I mean, I think here and there, maybe, maybe once or twice I've talked about it, but not like on a regular.

And so anyway, that's my point today is like, I want you to sit down and really think about all of the work that you've done leading up to this point and like, how can you utilize it in your content?

How can you utilize it in your conversations to really drive in authority and drive in expertise to beyond just your title, right?

Like, no, I'm coming to the table with this, this, this and this skill, right?

It's not just.

And I really do think that discernment is going to really appreciate that moving forward.

I just do.

I think you're going to see a shift in how people purchase and they.

Want to work with the people that.

Are like, I've been there, done that.

Like my most recent client said, like, one of the reasons I picked you is because you do everything that is rooted in data from a business perspective.

She worked in, you know, corporate, in the corporate world or whatever.

And she's like, everything is.

It's rooted in data versus some of this stuff is so online space only, right?

And you guys know what I'm talking about.

You know what I'M talking about in.

The sense that there are certain things that only fly in the online space, but that like.

But there are other.

Just business knowledge and information that has come into play that isn't just, like, relevant to the online space, if that's what.

You know what I mean?

That's what I'm trying to say.

Anyways.

Look at what skills you bring to the table and start actually bringing them to the freaking table.

Okay.

Hey.

Hey.

I hope you're having a great day.

I want to chat today about nurturing and building relationships.

And, you know, I talk about this all the time, but it's coming up again for me because I'm seeing a lot of this.

I don't know, I'm having a lot of conversations around just nurturing and different things.

And people tell me all the time that, you know, I'm phenomenal at nurturing people.

And that's just a superpower of mine.

And I will own that for sure.

I will definitely own the fact that nurturing people is 100% a superpower of mine.

But here's where.

And I think I've talked about this before, but I'm still seeing it.

And so here's what I am kind of seeing right now in a lot of circles that I am in, is that there are people.

What I see a lot of times, and maybe this is you.

And I'm not calling out anybody specifically, so it's.

Don't take this personal.

But I see where a lot of people only talk to or nurture or build relationships with the people that are either A, doing business with them or B, they think could be doing business with them.

And then everybody else, they're kind of just super hit or miss on.

And I see this happening in the community inside of Back Pocket Insights a little bit.

Not again.

I'm not calling out anybody specifically, but.

But I also see it happen all the time in the online space, right?

Where as soon as somebody either does business with you or.

Or they've.

Or they're no longer doing business, like, conversation stops, conversation ends.

There's no more nurturing.

There's no more keeping in touch.

There's no more having conversation, and it's like moving on to the next person.

Or there's this, like, where.

When people.

I was having a conversation inside of FVA where, you know, I have a few people I know where it's like, they show up on social, they start nurturing you new clients.

And I see that all the time, too.

Like, I have somebody who I don't hear from that often.

We're friends, you know, we're, we've, we've worked together in the past and you know, I don't typically hear from her on a regular basis, but then all.

Of a sudden every once in a while, she'll start reaching out to me.

She'll start commenting on my pictures, she'll start commenting on my post, she'll reach out.

And it's always when she's looking for new clients.

And it's just such an obvious pattern to me.

And again, maybe it's because I nurture people all the time, but I'm.

And it works for some people and I don't want to sit here and say it doesn't work because for some people it really does.

And I think for those that don't have this innate nurturing personality, they don't think anything of it, right?

But for me, I think here she comes again.

She only needs clients, right?

She must need clients because she's reaching back out again.

And it's so obvious to me.

And so I just want to kind of give you.

That is something to think about is like when you're building relationships.

And I think one of the reasons why I've been able to build so many beautiful relationships and why people continue to do business with me, why people come back year after year.

I just had somebody that joined Back Pocket Insights and signed up for business Planning, the year end biz planning program that I do every year.

And her and I haven't worked together in three years.

But we've continued to stay in touch.

We contact each other all the time, we respond to each other's emails, we, we touch bas on social, you know, that again, like, just because she hasn't been working with me one to one doesn't mean all of a sudden that the relationship that we built just needs to go away, right?

And so I just think, you know, so many people are so focused on like that next person, that next sale, that new relationship, and there's so many relationships that you've built that are just kind of falling to the wayside.

And I don't, I just think that my, my point here is this, is that, you know, nurturing doesn't come naturally to a lot of people.

But nurture all your relationships, right?

Like if you're in a community, nurture all the relationships in the community, not just the ones that you think are going to do business with you, not just the ones that are doing business with you, right?

If somebody shows up inside of a community and they're celebrating a win.

Like, comment and share on it, regardless whether or not they're doing business with you.

And so, again, I'm not calling out anybody specifically.

This is something I see in the online space all the time.

I see it on social media.

I mean, to me, it's, like, so very obvious.

Maybe I'm just extremely observant, but it's so obvious to me, it's like, yeah, they're working together.

Oh, yeah, she's trying to nurture her.

Oh, yeah, she's trying to convert her.

Like, it's just.

It's.

It's just obvious.

And I think that moving into a new year, if you're really looking at building relationships, is part of your strategy, I would really look at, like, what would it look like and what needs to change for you or what habit needs to be created for you to really just show up consistently.

Right?

Like, consistently and with no preconceived notions about anyone or anything or any situation specifically.

Because I'm telling you, the best clients a lot of times are the ones that you least expect, the ones that come out of nowhere.

Like, the new client that just came in, like, I didn't have any idea it was even on her radar.

I was not following up with her about the business planning program, you know, and she signed up on her own because we've continued to build a relationship.

I posted something that hit for her, you know, whatever it is.

So I just want to continue to give you that reminder because I think it's an important reminder to always remember as you're building your business.

All right.

Love you.

I believe in you.

I'll talk to you soon.