You’re Not Behind — You’re Just Ready Now

If you’ve ever thought, “I should be further along by now”—this one’s for you. In this episode, we bust the myth that you’re behind and explore the powerful shift that happens when you decide you’re ready. It’s not about perfection. It’s about momentum. Charlotte shares why feeling “stuck” is often just the final stage before a breakthrough—and how to act on it.

In this episode, we cover:

•Why the percolation phase (yep, like coffee) is crucial to your growth

•The real reason smart creatives delay sales and lead generation

•The mindset shift from “I’m not ready” to “I choose to move”

•What happens when you stop waiting and take imperfect action

•A sneak peek into LinkedIn Lead Liftoff—your done-for-you system to attract clients

✨ Feeling like this might be your moment? It is.

Check out kaffeen.co/llo and get your system in place before the 10th of May 2025.

>> Get Client Magnet: 97 Proven Strategies and Tactics to Attract New Business and Scale Your Creative Agency Revenue for FREE << 

>> Get Client Magnet: 97 Proven Strategies and Tactics to Attract New Business and Scale Your Creative Agency Revenue for FREE << 

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are four ways I can help you attract more high-value clients—without the hustle:

📚 Start with my free book

Join 3,000+ service providers and agency owners who’ve downloaded Client Magnet: 97 Proven Strategies and Tactics to Attract New Business and Scale Your Creative Agency Revenue.

(It’s written for agencies, but packed with advice any service provider can use.)

👉 Grab it free: https://kaffeen.co/book

🚀 Build your lead system with LinkedIn Lead Liftoff

A done-for-you lead generation system that brings in high-quality leads from LinkedIn—no content, cold calls, or awkward DMs required.

We’ll build it, set it up, and show you how to run it in under 30 minutes a day.

👉 Learn more: https://kaffeen.co/llo

🎧 Tune into the podcast

Get honest advice, expert interviews, and actionable tips to grow your service business with more clarity and less noise.

👉 Follow here: https://open.spotify.com/show/7upjztW0B3hQi2YlHTVdNn

💬 Work with me 1:1

I work with a handful of clients each quarter to increase visibility, build authority, and land consistent £30k+ opportunities—with a system that runs on autopilot.

👉 Book a consult: ...

Transcript

1:17

Hello. Hello. Welcome to the Kaffeen Espresso Podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about something that hits deep for a lots of creative business owners. That quiet little voice that says you should be further along by now. If you've ever felt like everyone else is ahead of you when it comes to lead generation finding clients, visibility, marketing, sales systems, this episode is your reminder that you are not behind. You're just ready now. And that's really powerful. Okay, let's get straight to it. So if you're listening to this and feeling a bit behind, maybe you've been watching others post on LinkedIn or running webinars or talking about their fully booked pipeline and thinking, God, I should be doing that too. Or, why have I not gone around to this? What's wrong with me? I'm disappointing or substandard business owner. Then first of all, take a breath because. What I want to say to you today is really simple. You're not late, you're not behind. You're just ready now, and that readiness, that is your superpower, I think. Over the past few years, I've realized just how much time it takes me to percolate information and arrive at a course of action. Sometimes sometimes the decision is instinctive and I know exactly what to do, and I'm very much a kind of like gut moving person. But gosh, that sounded pretty disgusting. Like a good decision person. But there are other times when I really think about this the kind of. Coffee filter where you used to use those paper cones, like a V 60 filter. People still use them, and. You have to be really patient. It takes time for the water to move through the coffee grinds and to go into the cup below The percolation process is basically what I'm focusing on here, and I hadn't realized we're rather appreciated until relatively recently, just how much. Information I am gathering on a particular topic at any given moment, and it's percolating. It's working in my subconscious, of course it is. I'm a human. And then I arrive at a solution like it's come outta the blue, like a thunderbolt, and I'm shocked by it and think, why didn't I get there sooner? I think I'm learning to appreciate that the percolation process is the point, and it does take time to arrive at a good solution often, if you are listening to this, that's what I mean by you're ready. Now, if you are feeling frustrated about this, if you're feeling like you want to take action, then that's a sign that you've reached the end of the percolation process and you are ready to move forward. Okay? Enough percolation analogy. I. There's already too much Kaffeen and coffee around this place. So here's the thing I see all the time with clients. They think they've been doing nothing, but actually they've been watching, observing, learning, gathering intelligence, feeling out what doesn't work for them. Kind of doing the reccon, part of the reconnaissance part of the of the mission. And that is, is that's the percolation that I'm talking about. That is those coffee, that's the coffee filter process. You that phrase, that phase doesn't look productive from the outside. But it's absolutely essential. And like I said, I think it's a sad thing that I've only relatively recently understood just how that phase is so essential to my decision making process and, taking the right course of action within my own business. Because once you decide, okay, now I wanna get serious about this, about whether it's about sales, about finding clients, about being in control of your growth, then that's when everything changes. So now I wanna talk a bit about why finding clients. Whatever you call it, lead generation, sales, marketing, outbound, inbound. Why that gets pushed to the bottom of the list, and here's why. I think so many people, especially smart, skilled, emotionally intelligent, creative, biased people put off finding clients. The reason is it's vulnerable. It requires you to say, I want more clients. I want something. I need something. And that opens the door to rejection. Self-doubt and all those delicious mindset gremlins that say, what if no one responds? What if I look desperate? What if I'm bothering people? So we push it down the to-do list or we start like with real gusto and then we stop when we run outta puff. Or we tell ourselves we're just not ready yet. And that's the easy way out, right? That's easy to say. Oh, no, we're still in that percolation process and we kid ourselves. And we don't take action. And then of course, very little happens as a result. So I wanna float a different idea. Readiness isn't a feeling, it's a decision. And look, I get it. I've done the same and I still do sometimes. But what I've realized and what I want you to take from this episode is that being ready isn't about having everything perfect. It's about deciding to move anyway, imperfect action. Most people wait until their sales pipeline or their client base or revenue is completely dry. Maybe they've lost a big retained client or they're in full blown panic mode when they take action. And by then the pressure's really on and everything feels harder because there are other factors at play, like keeping on your staff or contractors or. Your coworking space or the lights on, whatever it is, it's, there's a lot more pressure and that makes it harder to take action. But if you're listening to this now and you're not in crisis yet, this is your window. This is your signal, because proactive beats reactive every time. Now I wanna get into why now is the right time for you to take action? So let me tell you what happens when someone comes to me and says, I've got great clients, but I'm nervous about where the next ones are gonna be coming from. I. That person isn't behind, they're ready. And when we get them set up with a lead system that runs in the background that doesn't require daily posting or ads or hours of their time, they feel something they haven't felt in a while calm, because now they're not just hoping that referrals come in or panicking when they don't. They've done something to take control. They've done, they've taken action. They've shifted from passive to proactive, and the ripple effect is huge. More confidence, better conversations, more strategic clients, less stress. Even if you're not seeing the immediate impacts of clients coming in the very, very short term, you know you are doing something and that is. It frees you up to do, to take other action, to do the current work. It's like having an extra set of hands within your business. I frequently work with people who say we should started this six months ago or a year ago. Somebody who said this to me a while back was oh, hang on a second. I'm gonna have to find the quote. So my client, Emma Sexton, who is the founder at Inside Out said, before working with Kaffeen, I had no idea or plan and I wasted lots of money trying to work out what was best for my agency, our current size, and future growth plans. I really wish I'd met Charlotte 12 months ago as I knew. I wanted to get a smarter approach to my agency marketing, but I just couldn't work it out by myself. We now have a clarity and a super smart approach. We have really strong foundations in place, which are not costing me lots of money, time, and effort to maintain. And what I love most is the use of smart automation. You really made it simple to understand and get in place and. What Emma said there is not unusual. I'm frequently told I really wish I hadn't hesitated. I wish I'd set this up a while ago. It would've saved me worry, the waste of time worrying and thinking about this. It would've freed me up to do other things. It would've put my mind at rest. It would've given me the knowledge, even if we were really in a sound place that we don't. We have something ticking away in the background that is increasing our visibility is increasing our connections out to people, starting conversations with people. There's a Chinese proverb that I mention quite a bit. I'm just trying to find it now before I misquote it really badly. Here we go. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. And what I want to take or you to take from that is. As soon as you start something, you are always gonna feel a bit daft and feel like you should have done this ages ago. And I feel like that frequently within my business oh my goodness, I put this thing off. It was actually really simple. It was actually not that big a deal. Maybe not costly, time consuming or anything else. And now it's just happening in the background without me thinking about it and it's working on my behalf. Don't feel silly if you you will feel silly if you haven't already set something. I'll retake that. So it's likely you're gonna feel a bit daft, like I frequently do. If you set something up and you see it working for you and you wish you'd done it sooner. But what you should be doing is congratulating yourself that you actually took action at the point you were at. So again, imperfect action. So what does this have to do with you? So if you're still listening and something in your gut is going, Ugh, this is me, then here is your moment. You don't need a massive plan. You don't need a full rebound. You don't need to be ready to scale to seven figures. You just need to decide, I'm ready now. And once you make that decision, you can get help. So this month or over the course of the next 30 days, we're offering something called LinkedIn Lead Liftoff at a introductory price. It's a done for you system that gets your lead generation up and running in just three hours. No contact required, no call calls, no weird pitchy dms. You just show up for a call and we build your client attraction system fully set up and ready to go. It's normally 1400 pounds, but right now it's available at the launch price of just 900 pounds until the 10th of May, 2025. So if you're listening to this before the 10th of May, 2025, and you've been putting this off, telling yourself, I'll sort it out later, I want to lovingly suggest that maybe later is actually now. You can find out all the information Kaffeen.co/llo That's Kaffeen.co/llo and you can find that link in the show notes as well. So that's it for today. Just wanna remind you're not behind, you're ready right now. And Ready is a bloody brilliant place to be. Thank you for listening. I'll catch you next week.