the bossbabe podcast - 459: The Business Audit You Need to Do Right Now to Unlock Your Next Level

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

What if your next level of growth isn’t in a new strategy, but in your existing business? In this episode, Natalie shares the exact business audit she runs every quarter to unlock more revenue, simplify operations, and scale what’s already working. You’ll learn how to identify what’s profitable, uncover hidden bottlenecks, and make smarter, data-backed decisions that move the needle. She’ll guide you through how to assess your offers, leads, sales process, operations, and leadership — so you can stop guessing, start optimizing, and finally build momentum again. If you’re ready to grow without doing more — this is the audit that will show you how. It’s time to pause, reflect, and lead from a new level. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - You don’t need another strategy — you need a business audit 00:29 - The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make when trying to grow 00:57 - Step 1: Audit your revenue streams — what’s profitable vs. just taking up space 02:19 - The magic of simplifying instead of scaling complexity 03:11 - Step 2: Audit your lead gen — where are your best leads really coming from? 04:39 - Visibility ≠ leads — how to stop wasting time on the wrong platforms 05:56 - Step 3: Audit your sales process — where are your conversions leaking? 07:54 - How to fix friction and boost conversion with simple tweaks 08:29 - Step 4: Audit your operations — what tasks are slowing you down? 09:55 - Operational bottlenecks that stall growth (and what to automate or delegate) 10:51 - Step 5: Audit your leadership — are you the bottleneck? 12:17 - Why your business will only grow to the level you’re willing to lead it 13:12 - How to actually do your audit and uncover what’s been keeping you stuck 14:08 - Your next level isn’t “out there” — it’s already inside your business 14:53 - Real results from members inside The Société who’ve run this audit 15:22 - Leave a review and unlock Natalie’s 7-Figure CEO Operating System (for free!) RESOURCES + LINKS Join The Société: Our Exclusive Membership To Help You Build A Freedom-Based BusinessTM - start today for just $97.  Save Your Seat For Natalie’s Brand New, Free Live Masterclass On April 25 + Learn How To Turn Your Expertise Into Consistent Monthly Income — Without Big Launches Or A Massive Audience.  Sign Up For Our Free Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More.  Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We’ll Send You Natalie’s 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997).

Let me guess, you're working harder than ever, but somehow the results just still aren't where you want them to be. You're showing up, you're launching, you're busy all the time, but revenue is plateauing, growth feels slow, and no matter what you try, you can't seem to break through to that next level. If that's where you are right now, you don't need another strategy. You need a business audit. And no, I am not talking about busy work.

I am talking about the exact process I run every single quarter to figure out what's working, what's broken, and where my next level of growth is already hiding inside the business. Because here's the thing most entrepreneurs get wrong. We spend so much time doing that we forget to stop and reflect. We convince ourselves that more effort, more action, more content is the answer. But sometimes the fastest way to grow isn't doing more, it's figuring out what's slowing you down.

So today I'm walking you through the business audit you need to do right now to get unstuck, to unlock your next level and start building serious momentum again. Let's dive in. The first place we start in any business audit is simple, but most people actually avoid it. It's revenue streams. And I don't mean looking at your top line revenue and feeling good that money is coming in. I mean pulling up every single offer you have, you know, products that you have, courses, coaching, maybe it's membership, done for you services, affiliates,

whatever it is, all of it. Then ask yourself, what's actually making me more money? What's consistently generating revenue month after month? And what's just sitting there, taking up space on my website or cluttering my offers? Here's where most entrepreneurs get stuck. We fall in love with our offers, with our products. We feel attached because we spend so long creating them. But emotionally attached does not equal profitable.

Your job is to get brutally honest here. Look at the numbers. Don't just track revenue. Look at profit margins because high revenue offers can still be draining you if they're expensive to deliver, if they're team heavy, or they are time consuming. So I personally like to ask what is generating the highest profit with the least amount of complexity? What's generating revenue, but feels heavy or hard to sell or requires constant maintenance?

What is underperforming to the point where it actually might be distracting us from scaling what's working? And here's where the magic happens. You make decisions. Do I cut this? Do I simplify it? Or do I double down? Because what I've learned is businesses rarely grow by adding more complexity. They grow by optimizing what's working and cutting

what isn't. So when you do this audit, you'll usually find that 80% of your revenue is coming from 20% of your offers. And that is your clue. Instead of trying to scale everything, double down on the proven winners, refine the messaging, improve that customer journey, optimize the funnel, raise the price if the value is there. And for anything that is not pulling its weight, you have got a decision to make. Does it stay because it's strategic or is it actually time to let it go? Because deadweight offers will eat up your time, they will drain your team and they'll slow down growth.

And sometimes the fastest way to scale is just stop trying to save the things that aren't working and go all in on what is. So once you've cleaned up your offers, the next thing you need to audit is your lead generation. Because if leads aren't coming in consistently, it does not matter how great your offer is. Your growth will stall. And here's actually where a lot of entrepreneurs miss the mark.

We assume that because we're busy creating content, we're generating leads, but that really isn't true at all. In fact, visibility doesn't equal leads. Just because people are seeing you doesn't mean they are raising their hand to work with you. It doesn't mean that they're racing to your website to buy your products. So here's the question you have to answer really honestly. Where are your best leads actually coming from?

Not where do you hope they're coming from? Not what's trendy right now, but what is proven? What's actually converting for you? So pull the data, go back through your last 20 or 30 sales or clients and trace it. Did they come from Instagram? Referrals? A specific podcast interview? Paid ads?

A lead magnet that you have? Because here's what I see happen all the time. We're spending hours creating content for a platform that feels safe or familiar, but our actual leads, they might be coming from somewhere else entirely. And so this audit forces you to stop guessing and start doubling down where the traction is real. So for example, if 80% of your sales are coming from your email list, but you are spending all of your time creating reels, you're focused on the wrong thing.

If your referral network is strong, but you're not even nurturing it because you're busy filming YouTube videos, then you can see that that would be a missed opportunity. So breaking this all down, what is organic and working? What is paid and profitable? What's slowing down or worse, costing you money for no return? And also don't forget to check your actual funnels. So where are people dropping off? Are they opting in but never booking a call? Are they seeing your sales page but not buying? We asked people in our membership

if they're tracking their funnel and 50% said they aren't. So leads slowing down is the first sign your growth is about to stall or stop. And if you catch it, you can fix it before it hits your revenue. Once you know your lead sources, you can ask the hard questions. What's scalable here?

What needs nurturing? What's dying and just needs to go? Because lead gen isn't about throwing spaghetti at the wall. It's about finding the highest leverage channels and really pouring fuel there. I really think that's how you can create sustainable, predictable growth. Not random spikes when a post just happens to go viral. And remember, consistent lead flow is what keeps your entire business breathing. Because without it, you're just launching into the void and hoping that someone actually shows up. All right, so now that you've cleaned up your offers and you know where your

leads are coming from, it's going to be time to audit what happens next. And this is your sales process because let's face it, leads do not pay the bills, conversions do, and this is where most people leak revenue without actually even realizing it. One of the biggest mistakes I see here is entrepreneurs focus all their energy on getting more leads while completely ignoring the fact that their sales process is where people are actually slipping through the cracks. So here's where you zoom out and take a look at that entire customer journey from the second

someone opts in to when they actually buy. I really want you to ask yourself, are people getting stuck at a certain stage? Where is the most common drop off happening? What's the actual conversion rate from an opt-in to say a booked call to a purchase? Because if people are opting in, but never actually booking the call, they're landing on your sales page, but abandoning cart, that's where your growth is leaking.

So for example, you might think you need more traffic, but in reality, you do not have a traffic problem. You actually have a conversion problem. Maybe your offer positioning is unclear. Maybe your sales page copy just isn't hitting the pain points. Maybe your team on sales calls is qualifying the wrong people or worse, trying to convince people instead of convert. You have to know your numbers here.

So what is your opt-in to call booked rate? What is your call to close rate? What is your sales-in to call booked rate? What is your call to close rate? What is your sales page conversion percentage? Because every single percentage point matters. A 1% lifting conversion could mean five or six figures of additional revenue without needing a single extra lead. And here's something most people miss. Are you making it easy for people to buy?

Because sometimes the problem isn't interest, it's friction. Too many steps, confusing offers, unclear call to action, no urgency. Your job is to make that buying decision feel like the next obvious step. It should be seamless, simple and aligned. And if you do have a sales team, maybe audit their performance. Listen to some call recordings. Are they in alignment with your messaging? Are they qualifying properly?

Are they confident in closing or do they sound really hesitant and transactional? Sales is not about pushing people. It's about creating clarity. So helping the right people see why your offer is the solution that they've been looking for. And when you get this right, your business will stop feeling so heavy because you're no longer chasing leads.

You're focused on converting the ones literally right in front of you. All right. Next up is one of the most overlooked, but most powerful parts of this audit. Operations and efficiency. Because let's be honest, how many tasks are you still doing in your business that you really shouldn't be doing? So this is where founders get stuck in that cycle of I'm so busy. But when you zoom out, half the stuff you're doing isn't even driving growth. It's just keeping the machine running.

And so here is what I really want you to ask. What am I doing right now that could actually be automated? What's still manual because that's just how we've always done it. Where might the team be stuck waiting on me or each other to move something forward? Because bottlenecks aren't always obvious until you're actively looking for them. It could be something as small as you needing to improve every single email or piece of content before it goes out. It could be tasks like onboarding new clients, sending invoices or manually reporting data

every week. Things that eat up hours but actually don't grow the business. And here's the thing, if you are stuck in delivery, you're not leading. If you're still the primary person solving every problem, fixing every client issue or responding to every email, you're not running a business. You're just building yourself a job. That is why I audit this every quarter. I look at where I'm spending my time and ask, is this the best use of me as a CEO?

Or am I stuck in tasks that someone else could do 80% as well? And nine times out of 10, there's something that needs to be either automated, delegated, or just deleted. Then zoom out even further. Where is your team wasting time because systems are messy or outdated? Are they doing repetitive admin tasks that Zapier or AI could automate in minutes? Is your project management system a complete mess causing things to just slip through the cracks?

Maybe client delivery is taking twice as long because no one actually owns the process, right? Operational bottlenecks are really sneaky, but they are one of the fastest ways to stall growth. It's not always a sales or a marketing problem. Sometimes your business really can't grow because the back end literally can't handle more clients or more volume. So your job as the CEO, build the machine that runs whether you are in it or not. Get really ruthless about streamlining, fix the broken processes, tighten up the systems,

and protect your focus because that's where your next level lives. Now this last part can often be the hardest to look at, but it's usually where the biggest breakthroughs come from. Because sometimes it's not your offers, it's not your leads, it's not your team or your systems, it's you. The mindset, habits and leadership patterns that got you here aren't the ones that will get you to your next level. And if you're honest, you probably already know where you're holding yourself back. So this is where I ask myself every quarter some really uncomfortable but necessary questions. Am I operating like the CEO of this business or am I stuck playing employee,

solving problems that aren't mine anymore? Where am I avoiding leadership because it feels hard or uncomfortable? What beliefs am I carrying that might have served me last year but actually are now just keeping me stuck? Because let's be real, scaling a business requires a completely different version of you than starting one did. And most entrepreneurs, they stay in hustle mode way too long. They confuse being busy with being effective. They mistake doing everything as a sign of leadership when in reality

it's the opposite. Leadership means stepping back far enough to see the game. It means getting out of the weeds so you can make those hard calls. It means letting your team rise and being okay if they do it differently than you would. And sometimes it means looking in the mirror and asking, where am I holding onto control out of fear instead of leading from vision? Here's what I've learned. Your business will only grow to the level

you're willing to lead it, period. And when you hit that plateau, yes, sometimes it's strategic, but more often it's internal. It's a mindset upgrade that hasn't happened yet. It's you needing to let go of old ways of operating that feel safe, but are quietly keeping you small. So during this audit, don't skip this step. Sit with it because the fastest way to unlock your next level of growth probably isn't going to be another strategy. It might be becoming the version of you who can actually lead the business you say that you want.

Alright, if you've made it this far, you know what's coming next. It's time to actually sit down and do this audit. Because here's the truth. Your answers aren't out there in another podcast episode, in another course, or another strategy. They are already inside your business. You sometimes just need to be guided where to look. And so what you could do is block an hour on your calendar this week. No distractions, no multitasking, pull up your numbers, open your notes,

and go through each of these areas. Really asking yourself which revenue streams are truly working. Where are your best leads coming from? Where are you losing people in your sales process? What operational bottlenecks are slowing you down? And the hardest one, where is your own leadership, the thing that needs upgrading? Because I can tell you from experience, every time I felt stuck,

every time the business plateaued, the answers weren't in some secret strategy I hadn't learned yet. They were sitting right there in front of me, hiding in my blind spots. And once you see it, you can fix it. You can make the decision that could change everything. So I really don't want you to skip this. This audit is how you stop spinning your wheels and start making CEO level moves that actually grow the business. And remember the next level you're chasing, it's not out there. It is inside your business. You just have to be willing to pause, to look, and to lead.

And something that I want to share, if you found this particularly useful, is I do think you would love being a member of our membership to society. In fact, every single month we create challenges like this one to help you work on your business with the resources and the accountability to support you through it. So like with the operational area here, we actually recently ran a simplified to amplified challenge in our membership, which had huge results for our members. I remember Claire, one of our members sharing that she actually freed up 10 hours a week and saved thousands of dollars just from our

in-depth software and operations audit. And Katie, she actually cut costs in her business by 42% in that exact same challenge. Everything we do inside the society is designed to help you build a freedom-based business that you love and you can jump in for $97 a month. So if you're interested, I'm gonna leave all the links that you need below or you can head to bossrv.com forward slash membership Alright, I'll see you in the next episode Wait, wait, wait before you go

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