Promote Yourself to CEO | Small Business Strategy for Women Entrepreneurs

A few months ago I made three photorealistic images of myself, put my logo on them, and posted them to Facebook.People laughed. They were supposed to. I had run my real photo shoot images through a meme generator with a 2,000 character summary of my business, and what came back was, in my head, cartoonish.

 Obviously fake. A joke.

Then a couple of comments came in. This is kind of creepy. This isn’t you, right?

I went looking for those images this week to pull them for this episode, and that is when it hit me. They are not cartoonish. That is my office. That is my chair. Those are the plants behind me in the real photos. If you did not know me in person, you would think they came from the same shoot as everything else on my website.

That is the whole problem with using AI in a business built on relationships. You know what is real because you made it. Nobody else has that information. This is part two of the Human-First AI for High-Trust Business series, and it is about the trust you lose without ever finding out you lost it.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

→ The comment on my Facebook post that told me everything I needed to know about where the line is
→ Why the version of you that shows up online can be technically accurate and still cost you the client
→ What I said to a retoucher in 2016 that turned out to be the same rule I am writing about AI in 2026
→ Why the trust break never appears in your analytics, and what it looks like instead when it finally surfaces
→ The reason everyone in your industry suddenly sounds identical, and why it has almost nothing to do with the tools
→ How the AI content advice being sold right now is built for a business model that is not yours
→ What I am completely fine using AI for, said plainly, so you can steal the framework and draw your own line

Key Concepts from the Episode

The AI Generated Content Blind Spot. When you create something with AI you have information nobody else has. You know which parts came from a prompt, which room you were actually sitting in, and which facial expression you have never made in your life. Your audience sees only the output.

The Invisible Unsubscribe. Nobody hits reply to tell you that something just seems off – a little less like the YOU they originally connected with – and that shows up as silent unsubscribes or tanking engagement while your dashboard shows you nothing at all. Months later you are staring at falling open rates trying to work out what changed.

Two Pairs of Spanx. In 2016, after a $35,000 rebrand and a two-day shoot at the Quirk Hotel, the retoucher sent back a photo of a woman thinner (and with much perkier boobs) than I had been since before I had three kids. The feedback I wrote back drew a line that has held for a decade: smooth the dress, do not change the shape of my body.

Everything is Becoming Beige. AI can only synthesize what already exists. Hand it nothing of yours and it hands you back the average of your entire industry, which is why the newsletters, the captions, the color palettes, the layouts, and even the haircuts have become a copy-paste across so many industries.

Front of House vs Back of House (Internal Infrastructure). No one has ever asked me which CRM I run. Your internal systems are infrastructure and nobody needs a disclosure about them. Your face, your voice, and your point of view are a different category entirely.

Resources Mentioned

My AI Statement. The full public statement on how The CEO Collective® uses AI, sitting on the site right next to the privacy policy and the terms.

Human-First AI for High-Trust Business, Episode 1. Where I landed on AI after six months of using it, and why I wrote the statement at all.

Descript. What I use to record and edit the podcast, and a clean example of the behind-the-scenes category I have no problem using day to day without breaking trust with my community

Want to Learn AI From the Same Program I Did?

Callan Faulkner’s AI Employee Bootcamp is where I built the AI infrastructure now running behind my marketing, my client delivery, my finance reporting, and the tech stack that holds it all together. I came in with the systems and SOPs I had already built through my 90 Day CEO Operating System®, and we built the automation layer on top of them. I am going through it again because there is still more I want to implement.

Register through my affiliate link and you get a bonus bootcamp debrief group call with me, to translate what Callan teaches into a high-trust, relationship-based business. That translation is the part most AI training skips entirely.

Register for the bootcamp through my affiliate link.

I earn a commission when you register through that link. I was sending people to Callan long before there was a commission attached, and I am currently a student in her program.

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

Subscribe & Review:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!

Most of the conversation about AI is happening at two extremes. Founders bragging publicly about the payroll they cut, and founders refusing to touch any of it. Both are missing the point, and neither one leaves you with an answer you can actually run a business on.

So I spent six months deep diving into AI so I could form my own thoughts. Three programs, an intensive, and a lot of building. Not reading about it. Not collecting other people’s opinions. Actually using it inside this business until I had a aligned AI position I would be willing to defend out loud.

This is the first episode of Human First: The AI Series for High-Trust Businesses, and I am starting where I always start, which is values. I go into what I am genuinely worried about, and that list is long. There are parts of this business I will never hand over, and I name every one of them. Then I get to the question almost nobody is asking alongside me, which is not whether you should use AI but who gets the upside when you do.

I also published our full AI policy this week and added an AI statement to our values page. Nobody expects a business my size to do that. I did it anyway, and I will tell you exactly why.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why the two loudest positions on AI are both wrong, and where I landed after six months of building with it instead of arguing about it
• The moment two different AI models answered the exact same question about my anxiety medication in two completely different ways, and what that difference actually proves
• What I am genuinely worried about, including the data centers going up around me in Virginia and the conversation my own kids are already living through
• The question I asked my cousin about how AI was being rolled out at her company that nobody in the room had an answer for
• Why a deliverable that used to be a $10,000 engagement is now built into my client work, and the decision I made about the savings
• The one filter I used to decide who to learn from, and the three people who passed it
• What I will never automate in this business, and why I want you to write your own version of that list this week

Key Concepts from the Episode

Consider the Source. My parents’ rule for who to take advice from, applied to a technology conversation full of people whose proudest result is a spreadsheet with fewer humans on it. I went looking for teachers who were talking about impact instead of headcount reduction.

If somebody’s biggest flex is the thing that turns your stomach, they are not your teacher.

Sitting Out Is Not the Neutral Position. Abstaining from AI does not protect you from what AI does to your industry. It only removes you from the rooms where it is getting built, priced, and regulated.

Opting out does not stop the thing from being built. It just guarantees you were not in the room when it was.

Whoever Builds It Decides Who It Works For. Safiya Noble made this argument about search engines in 2018 and it lands harder now. The results a system hands back are shaped by who built it and what they were optimizing for.

The two models did not disagree by accident. Somebody sat in a room and decided where the line was.

Who Gets the Upside. Productivity has been climbing for a century while wages sat still. AI can widen that gap faster than anything before it, or it can close it, and that is a choice each of us makes inside our own business.

If AI made you more profitable and nobody else in the business felt it, that is not efficiency. That is the old model with better tools.

Going Beige. Dabbling is the worst available position. Half-using AI is how a business built on relationships ends up sounding exactly like every other business in its category.

The people who barely touch it are the ones who will sound the most like everyone else.

Want to Learn AI From the Same Program I Did?

Callan Faulkner’s AI Employee Bootcamp is where I built the AI infrastructure now running behind my marketing, my client delivery, my finance reporting, and the tech stack that holds it all together. I came in with the systems and SOPs I had already built through my 90 Day CEO Operating System®, and we built the automation layer on top of them. I am going through it again because there is still more I want to implement.

Register through my affiliate link and you get a bonus bootcamp debrief group call with me, to translate what Callan teaches into a high-trust, relationship-based business. That translation is the part most AI training skips entirely. 

Register for the bootcamp through my affiliate link.

I earn a commission when you register through that link. I was sending people to Callan long before there was a commission attached, and I am currently a student in her program.

Resources Mentioned

Our AI Use Statement. Exactly which tools we use, what happens to the call recordings inside my programs, and what we will never do with your information. Specific enough that you can hold me to it. 

Our Values. Human first, always, plus the rest of what this business stands on. 

Staying Focused is Your Political Resistance Right Now. The episode where I made the case that your business is your political resistance. 

AI Business Lab. Michael Hyatt’s program, where I first saw what AI could do to a workflow. 

Codified in the City. Maria-Ines Fuenmayor, who built the dashboard that pulled my reporting out of five different places and into one. 

Rachel Rodgers on Substack. Her writing on why opting out does not protect you is where a lot of my thinking landed. 

Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble. The 2018 book about search engines that explains most of what is happening with AI right now. 

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

Subscribe & Review:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!

There is still a block sitting on my calendar from the second week of July that says “Record new podcast episodes.”

I never moved it. I sat down in front of it most mornings, pushed it to the next day, then to the next week, and eventually I stopped pretending and just let it sit there being wrong.

My granny died while my family was in Italy – just 6 months after my mom passed away. 

So instead of returning home and jumping right into my Q3 90 Day Plan that I’d created before traveling, I went to another funeral and pressed pause on everything else.

When your plan falls apart, the useful question is not how to get back on track → it’s what do I actually have the capacity for, right now?

In this episode, we’re catching up a bit on what’s been happening behind the scenes, including what I let go during this summer, what continued to run without me, and (a little teaser of what’s coming up this fall) how I spent a lot of that extra time researching and forming my own opinions around AI for small business.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• What it actually looks like to run a business when navigating a tidal wave of grief (again)
• The triage questions I ran my Q3 90 Day Plan through when I only had a fraction of my usual capacity
• How I followed my curiosity (and yes – the dopamine hit) learning about AI for small business
• The single prompt that took me from AI-curious to AI-serious in about half an hour
• What that research told me about my own positioning that I did not want to hear
• Why every plug-and-play AI promise I tested came back generic, and what has to happen first
• What is inside Human First, the AI series for high-trust businesses, starting September 3

Key Concepts from the Episode

Your business should not fall apart when you fall apart. My ads kept running, the private podcast series went out, my team kept the operations moving, and I limited myself to the work only I could do. None of that was luck. It was infrastructure built before I needed it.

Must-Do versus Nice-To-Do. When my capacity dropped, I went back to the 90-Day Plan and asked one question about every line on it. Client-facing work got fiercely protected. Everything else became optional, including the newsletter and this podcast.

The murky middle. I watched people I respect go hard pro-AI and I watched the comments section go hard against it. What if you could see both sides? The position I landed on came from Randi Buckley’s language: context, nuance, and discernment.

50 Hours of market research in under 30 Minutes. I have given clients a 100 Conversations Challenge for years, and the honest math on that is around 50 hours of work most people never do for their business. Then I found and tweaked a research prompt that truly impressed me with research that was fully cited with linked results and references, including industry research that would have taken even more hours to go through. It quickly assessed where my business was stuck in the ‘sea of sameness’ plus messaging that I could uniquely own.

The Unicorn Assistant Problem. For years, I’ve watched people struggle to build a team because they are hoping for a magical unicorn assistant who can not only do everything – organize their calendar, respond to emails, create social media content, handle the bookkeeping – but can do it all on Day 1 of working together. Now I’m watching people treat AI the exact same way. That’s not how this works! You’ve got to create the foundational infrustructure first!

Resources Mentioned

Marketing for High-Trust Businesses. The private podcast series built for the businesses where you know your clients’ names, plus the assessment that names the gap in your marketing. Free. theceocollective.com/high-trust-marketing

Randi Buckley, Healthy Boundaries for Kind People. The source of the context, nuance, and discernment language I use throughout this episode. https://www.randibuckley.com/

Michael Hyatt’s AI program. One of the first paid programs I tested. https://aibusinesslab.ai/

Maria-Ines Fuenmayor, Codified in the City. The day we spent in Florence building my dashboard and mapping which internal tools were worth building. https://codifiedinthecity.com/

Callan Faulkner, A2A. Automate to Accelerate. Her early stance that AI is here to amplify human work is most of why I joined. https://theuncommonbusiness.co/

Gabi Day, Hype-Ma’am. Runs the ads for The CEO Collective®, 90 Day CEO Certified Professional®, and my guest for the final episode of the series. https://hypemaam.com/home

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

Subscribe & Review:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!

You come home from a planning day lit up. Six hours of clarity, a wall of Post-its, a quarter that finally makes sense. Then you sit down with your team, and somewhere between your head and their inbox the whole thing flattens into a to-do list nobody has the context for.

Elise Arsenault knows that exact moment. She built The Global Actor into a training program the audiobook industry has come to trust, with ten of her graduates nominated at this year's Audies and several of them winning. And for years she came back from the CEO Retreat® alone, carrying a quarter's worth of decisions she then had to translate, explain, and hope landed. She called it instant overwhelm. She was not wrong.

This episode is the before and after of what changes when the operator is in the room. Priscilla Leonard runs operations for The Global Actor, and she and Elise have built that business together for years without ever meeting in person. When Elise started bringing Priscilla to the retreats, the handoff stopped being a handoff. It became a real conversation about why, not just what.

We get into how the 90 Day CEO Operating System® becomes the bridge between a visionary who sees the whole horizon and the right hand who makes it actually happen, what shifts when your team owns their goals instead of receiving them, and why Elise no longer believes the whole thing could fall apart if she stopped working for a week.

If you have a right hand and you have been carrying the plan alone, this one shows you what the other version looks like.

About Elise Arsenault and Priscilla Leonard

Elise Arsenault is an actor, coach, and the founder of The Global Actor, the training program behind the Great Audiobook Adventure. She has spent the last decade building a body of work the audiobook narration industry has come to trust, with casting directors who recognize her course by name and ten of her graduates earning Audie nominations this year. 

Priscilla Leonard is her right hand and runs operations for the business, a role she grew into after coordinating The Global Actor's first thousand-attendee summit and eventually coming on full time.

Elise has been part of The CEO Collective® for years and plans each quarter at the CEO Retreat®. When the membership added its team tier, she started bringing Priscilla into the retreats with her, and the two of them now run their quarterly planning through the 90 Day CEO Operating System® as a team. They have built The Global Actor together across a virtual team for years, and they have still never met in person.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• Why coming home from a planning day fired up can quietly create more overwhelm, not less
• What actually changes when your operator sits in the planning room instead of getting the recap afterward
• How the 90 Day CEO Operating System® becomes a translator between a visionary and her right hand
• The shift that lets a CEO stop believing the whole business could collapse if she stepped away for a week
• What it looks like when every person on the team owns their own quarterly goals instead of inheriting a list
• How Elise reclaimed time for her own craft once operations had a clear owner
• Why you do not have to fix everything at once, including the email address that has been wrong for ten years

Key Concepts from the Episode

The Bridge Between Vision and Logistics. The 90 Day CEO Operating System® gives a big-picture CEO and a detail-driven operator a shared language, so the plan stops getting lost in translation between the two of them. A visionary who sees the whole horizon still needs the person who knows where every step actually lands.

The Right Hand Belongs in the Room. When Priscilla started attending retreats instead of receiving the six-hour download afterward, she stopped getting a to-do list and started getting the reasoning behind it. Your team can execute a plan they were handed. They commit to a plan they helped build.

Calm Is Capacity. For years Elise believed the business would fall apart if she stopped working for a single day. With the systems and clear ownership in place, that fear quieted. The proof a system is working is that you can step away from it and nothing falls.

Own the Goal, Don't Inherit It. Every team member now carries their own quarterly goals in Asana, set together in a co-working session rather than assigned from on high. Ownership is not something you delegate. It is something you let people take.

You Don't Have to Fix It All Today. The company rebranded to The Global Actor years ago and still runs on a ten-year-old email address that does not match the name, and that is fine. Permission to leave the small broken thing alone is what lets you finish the big right thing.

Resources Mentioned

The CEO Collective®. The membership where established service-based, relational business owners install the systems and leadership to grow without sacrificing the life the business is supposed to support. The Scaling CEO tier brings your right hand into the room with you. 

CEO Retreat®. The quarterly planning experience where Elise and Priscilla map their next 90 days together. Available in On-Demand, Live Virtual, and Live In-Person Richmond formats.

The Global Actor. Elise's training program for actors and creatives building careers in audiobook narration. 

Connect with Elise Arsenault and Priscilla Leonard

• Website: The Global Actor
• The Great Audiobook Adventure

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

Subscribe & Review:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!

Adrienne Loker was certain her group therapy practice needed more marketing. Her numbers said otherwise. Here is what actually turned her business around.

Most therapists believe the path to growth is hiring a team and handing off clients. Adrienne did exactly that, and the plan that looked perfect on paper came apart the moment real people and real life entered the picture. People got licensed and left with their caseloads. The loyalty she thought she had earned was not for sale.

In this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO, Adrienne Loker shares how she rebuilt Seeking Depth to Recovery, her trauma-focused group therapy practice in Richmond, Virginia, on clear vision, values, and the kind of systems that hold a business together when everything is testing it at once. 

We get into the team values that ended her churn, the one number that changed how her whole team behaved overnight, and why the slow, unglamorous work of building systems is what kept her doors open through the hardest stretch of her career.

If you are a group practice owner, a private practice owner, or any service-based business owner who keeps being told to "just hire a team," this conversation will change how you think about growth.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:

- Why hiring people to take clients off your plate is the wrong reason to build a group practice
- The three values Adrienne hires, trains, and resolves conflict by
- The single number that shifted her whole team's behavior in one meeting
- The canoe versus cruise ship reframe for how long real change actually takes
- The metric she was not tracking that was quietly telling the real story
- What kept her business standing through eighteen of the hardest months of her career

ABOUT ADRIENNE:

Adrienne Loker, LCSW is the founder of Seeking Depth to Recovery, a trauma-focused group therapy practice in the greater Richmond, Virginia area. She is a national trauma recovery expert and trainer, an EMDRIA Certified Therapist and Consultant, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and a psychodrama therapist. She and her team specialize in working with people who have done therapy before and still feel stuck.

CHAPTERS:

0:00 Intro
[MM:SS] Meet Adrienne and Seeking Depth to Recovery
[MM:SS] Why she started a group practice
[MM:SS] The hard lessons of building a team
[MM:SS] The ART values that changed everything
[MM:SS] The $65,000 wake-up call
[MM:SS] Standardizing her approach to trauma therapy
[MM:SS] What the 90-Day CEO Operating System changed
[MM:SS] Managing shiny objects and staying focused
[MM:SS] Advice to her younger self
[MM:SS] Systems that hold you through catastrophe

CONNECT WITH ADRIENNE:

Website: https://www.seekingdepthtorecovery.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrienne-loker-lcsw-emdr-sep-016339165/

WORK WITH RACHEAL:

The CEO Collective: https://theceocollective.com
The CEO Retreat: https://theceocollective.com/join

Subscribe to Promote Yourself to CEO for a new episode every week on building a business that supports your life.

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

Subscribe & Review:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!

Right now, as you hear this, I am probably lounging by a pool in a villa in Tuscany, watching my kids and their cousins splash around while I have my full Under the Tuscan Sun moment. There is a family wedding tomorrow, a welcome dinner tonight, and still another 2 weeks of exploring Florence and Rome ahead.

What I am not doing is refreshing my inbox in a panic, wondering whether everything is quietly falling apart back home. I already know it isn’t.

My business can run without me at the wheel for a month. Clients are cared for, content goes out, sales happen, and none of it depends on me sitting in a chair pressing send. I want to be honest about what that takes, because it is the opposite of luck. A month away like this is not something you cross your fingers and hope for. It is something you design, with the same intentionality I once gave to planning a maternity leave.

This is the finale of the Summer Success Series, the episode where the whole thing comes together. I am walking you through how I planned a full month in Italy using my Client Growth Engine as the map, stage by stage, so every part of the business could keep moving while I am present with my family across an ocean.

If you have ever wanted a sabbatical, an extended vacation, or even one real week off where you are not secretly working the whole time, this is the episode that shows you what a business that runs without you actually looks like from the inside.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why an extended break is a planning decision, not a personality trait or a stroke of luck
• The one stage of the Client Growth Engine I protected first, and why it is not the one most people would guess
• How I covered four weeks of live client calls without canceling a single one or being on a single one
• The enrollment timing shift that meant I could fully onboard new clients before I ever boarded the plane
• What “checking in a couple times a week” actually means when you refuse to run your whole trip from your phone
• The conversation most business owners skip before they leave, and how skipping it quietly damages client trust
• How far ahead I batch my content, and why the buffer is really about protecting a promise

Key Concepts from the Episode

A Month Away Is Designed, Not Winged. Stepping away for a month is not luck or special treatment. It is an outcome you build proactively, with the same intentionality you would give a maternity leave. The business does not run on your stamina. It runs on what you built while you had the stamina to build it.

Start at Delight, Not Attract. When I mapped the month, I started with my existing clients, the place my absence would be felt most, before touching marketing or sales. Protecting the people already paying you comes before protecting the pipeline. Your current clients notice your absence faster than your audience ever will. Plan for them first.

Guest Stars Instead of Canceled Calls. Rather than cancel weeks of live support, I invited seasoned members of The CEO Collective to host calls and bring their own expertise. The members get a perk, not a gap. A canceled call is a hole in the experience. A guest expert is an upgrade to it.

The Buffer Is a Promise, Not a Convenience. Batching content far in advance is not really about this trip. It is a standing commitment so that something useful goes out every week no matter what life does. Life is gonna life. The buffer is how your audience never feels it.

If You Are the System, You Are the Ceiling. The reason the business holds while I am gone is that I spent years building systems instead of being the system. A business built around the owner’s presence can never outgrow the owner’s presence. A business that needs you in the chair every day can never be bigger than your calendar.

Resources Mentioned

On-Demand CEO Retreat + Client Growth Engine bundle. The proactive planning process I use to map a year, paired with the engine that lets your business keep running while you step away. Bundled at $497 through June 30 before the price rises.

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

Subscribe & Review:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!

There is a specific kind of quiet that gets under your skin in July, and it has nothing to do with a slow, lazy afternoon. It is the quiet of your bank account. Clients are off on vacation, nobody is starting anything new, and you can feel the revenue dip coming the way you feel a storm before it lands.

I used to brace for that quiet too. Now I don’t, because of one strategic move I make almost every summer. It is the same reason I can spend a month in Italy with my family without watching my revenue flatline while I am gone.

The summer cash-flow dip is not a demand problem. It’s not a sign you are doing something wrong. More often – it is a timing problem. People aren’t wanting to tackle a new project or focus on new goals when they have a trip to the beach coming up in a couple of weeks.

This episode is a smart strategy to help you solve the timing problem. I am walking you through how to pre-sell your fall, get the yes now while it is quiet, and set the work to start in September or October, so the deposit is in, the contract is signed, and you actually get to enjoy your summer knowing revenue is already on its way.

It is the difference between white-knuckling your way to fall and walking into Q4 already booked. Let’s get into it.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why the summer cash dip is usually a timing problem, not a demand problem, and what that changes about how you fix it
• The one move Racheal makes almost every summer to keep revenue coming in while she is offline
• What pre-selling your fall actually looks like in practice, from deposit to contract to a locked future start date
• How to position the offer so it lands as care and leadership instead of a pushy pitch
• What the September scramble costs your clients, and how booking them now is the gift
• The onboarding step that decides whether a pre-sell holds together or falls apart
• How to run the whole thing off a curated list and a few personal invitations, no sales page required

Key Concepts from the Episode

The Summer Dip Is a Timing Problem. The cash slowdown most service providers brace for in July is not your audience losing interest. It is your audience postponing, because they are juggling vacations and downtime and do not want to start something they will have to babysit mid-trip. Demand did not disappear. It got rescheduled, and you are allowed to reschedule it back.

Pre-Sell the Fall. Get the yes while it is quiet. The deposit gets paid, the contract gets signed, and the start date gets set for the end of August, September, or October. You are not doing the work now, you are holding the date. A held date with real money behind it is the difference between hoping fall fills up and knowing it already has.

Pushy Is a Story, Not a Fact. If reaching out to book people in advance feels pushy, that usually points to a quiet belief that your offer is an imposition rather than a result your clients want. If the work makes their life easier and gets them what they came for, getting on your calendar now is leadership, not a hard sell.

You Are Protecting Them From the September Scramble. When everyone comes back at once, school starts, routines snap back, and your clients are suddenly racing to get year-end projects done against a calendar that is already full. Booking now spares them that pileup. The pre-sell is not you asking for something. It is you handing your client their fall back before it gets crowded.

The System Is What Makes It Repeatable. One pre-sale stitched together with a scramble of emails and a payment link is doable. A pre-sell you can run every summer without rebuilding it from scratch is a Client Growth Engine™, the repeatable system underneath your marketing, sales, and client experience. Pull it off once and it is a heroic effort. Build the system underneath it and it is just something your business does.

Resources Mentioned

On-Demand CEO Retreat + Client Growth Engine bundle. The strategic thinking behind a proactive quarter, paired with the repeatable system that puts marketing, sales, and client experience on rails so pre-selling becomes something your business does on purpose. The price goes up at the end of June. 

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

Subscribe & Review:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!

I grew up in the river realm of Virginia, where everyone either had a boat or knew someone who did, and summer meant Friday afternoons out on the water before the weekend even started. The reason my family got to do that was simple. My dad ran summer hours in his business, and by noon on Friday the office was empty and everyone was gone.

I didn’t clock it as a business decision back then. I just knew we were a little different. But I’ve run summer hours in my own business every single year since, and every time I bring the idea to another business owner, I hear the same fear underneath it. If I’m less available, I’ll lose clients.

You won’t. Summer hours are not an availability problem. They’re a communication problem, and that’s something you can fix in an afternoon.

This episode is your permission slip, except the permission isn’t coming from me. It’s coming from you. I’ll walk you through how I set my hours, the way I communicate them so nobody panics, and how my model calendar turns the boundaries living in my head into something my team and my family can see and plan around.

Decide your hours. Communicate them everywhere your clients reach you, well before the season starts. That’s the whole move, and by the end of this one you’ll know how to make it.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why setting summer hours is a communication problem and not an availability problem, and how that one distinction changes everything about how you handle it
• The exact way my parents announced summer hours every year with no apology and no long explanation
• How to reset client expectations around your response time without losing a single client
• What a summer autoresponder should actually say so it does the heavy lifting before you ever open your inbox
• The difference between summer hours and a true out of office, and how to communicate a longer stretch away
• How a model calendar turns the boundaries in your head into something your family and your team can plan around
• The one standing appointment that stays on your calendar no matter what season you’re in

Key Concepts from the Episode

It’s a Communication Problem, Not an Availability Problem. The fear is that shorter hours will cost you clients. What actually rattles clients is not knowing what to expect, and expectations are something you get to set. Clients don’t bristle at shorter hours. They bristle at not knowing what to expect.

State It Plainly, Skip the Apology. My parents announced summer hours everywhere a client might look, on the website, in email footers, on the voicemail, on a sign at the door, with no apology and no justification. Just the new normal, posted before the season started. You’re not asking permission to take Fridays. You’re telling people how summer works.

The Autoresponder Does the Work. A summer autoresponder sets your response time the second someone emails you, and a short FAQ of your most common requests answers half of them before they reach you. Set the expectation the moment someone hits send, and you stop answering the same question all summer.

The Model Calendar Makes Boundaries Visible. My model calendar maps my ideal week into theme days, CEO day, client day, content day, and CEO Collective day, so nothing gets dropped and my capacity is obvious at a glance. It also lets my family and my team plan around me instead of guessing. A boundary that only lives in your head is one nobody else can honor.

The CEO Date Is the Non-Negotiable. Whatever shifts for the season, the weekly CEO date stays. It’s the standing block where you work on the business, check your 90-day plan, and track your 12-month goals. Summer hours change with the season. The CEO date is the appointment that doesn’t.

The On-Demand CEO Retreat. Build your 90-day plan on your own schedule, around your summer instead of on top of it. Currently bundled with the Client Growth Engine™, the first system we install in every business inside The CEO Collective®.

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

Subscribe & Review:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!

My three teenagers are home for the summer, the calendar cleared out the last week of May, and like a lot of business owners I could feel the pull to write the next two months off and call it a season.

I’m not doing that, and I don’t want you to either.

After almost 20 years of running this business, here’s what I’ve watched happen every single year. The women who disappear completely in June and July are the same ones scrambling in September, marketing dried up, no clients in the pipeline, head barely above water. The chaos they feel in the fall isn’t a fall problem. It’s a summer problem.

This is the season I do some of the most strategic work of my entire year, and I still take two full weeks off with my family. Both are true. I’m recording this in early June with most of 2027 already mapped, not because I’ve converted to hustle culture, but because I refuse to spend October panicking while I’m also helping my kids study for the SATs.

What I want to give you today is a way to use a slower summer to build the capacity fall is going to demand, so you walk into your busiest season with more room instead of more dread.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why the version of you who disappears this summer is the same version scrambling in the fall
• The line between a slower season and a stalled-out one, and how to tell which one you’re actually in
• How to read your clients’ seasons the way Target reads a retail calendar
• The one summer capacity project to pick, and why trying to do all of them is the wrong move
• What “hire slow, fire fast” actually asks you to start doing in June, not September
• How to get four to eight weeks ahead of your marketing without running it on willpower
• The quiet planning choice that ends the feast or famine cycle for good

Key Concepts from the Episode

Summer Is a Season With a Job to Do. Slower does not mean stopped. When demand dips and your inbox quiets down, that open space is the whole point. It’s the time to finally work on the business instead of in it. Slower seasons are not the same as stalled out. Don’t check out just because your clients did.

Your Business Has Seasons, and So Do Your Clients. Planning as if every month brings identical demand, energy, and client volume is magical thinking. The fix is knowing your own growth seasons and, just as much, knowing where your clients’ attention actually is. Meet your clients where their attention is, not where you wish it was.

Build the Capacity Before the Demand Shows Up. Q3 has one job, and that’s building the infrastructure for the clients you already know are coming in the fall. Wait until they arrive and you’re onboarding in a panic with your head barely above water. You can’t wait for the demand to show up and then build the capacity. That’s where the scrambling comes from.

Stop Building on Willpower. Willpower is the first thing to go when life gets hard or busy, so marketing that only runs when you can show up week after week is built on the wrong foundation. Batch the assets, map the sales calendar a year out, and let the systems carry the heavy lifting. Willpower is the first thing that goes when life gets hard. Build assets, not motivation.

Feast or Famine Is a Planning Choice. The cycle isn’t a fact of running a business. It smooths out when the work you do in the quiet seasons holds through the loud ones, and your business stops depending on your stamina. Calm is capacity, and you can spend the summer building a little bit of both.

Resources Mentioned

The On-Demand CEO Retreat. Build your 90-day plan on your own schedule, around your summer instead of on top of it. Currently bundled with the Client Growth Engine™, the first system we install in every business inside The CEO Collective®. 

The CEO Mid-Year Review. The episode and workbook for pressing pause, checking your real numbers to date, and looking forward through the next six months. This is the first move of the season. 

Notes to Future Me. The episode on the habit Racheal uses to protect her calendar and her capacity, and to leave herself instructions for the busy weeks ahead. 

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

Subscribe & Review:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!

There is a note blocking off the last week of May in my calendar, and it is yelling at me. Last week of school. Do not plan anything. All caps. Too many exclamation points. When I open it, past me has left the longer version: be nice to yourself, Racheal, there will be concerts and awards and kid stuff, the twins get out by one most days.

I wrote that a year ago, for the version of me who would forget. And she always forgets.

Here is the thing nobody tells you about capacity. The reason you keep overcommitting is not that you lack discipline. Overcommitting is not a discipline problem, it’s a memory problem. We forget the things that repeat, the school years and the flare days and the travel that wrecks you for three days after, and then we plan the next six months as if every week is sitting there waiting for us. It is not.

So I started leaving notes to future me. In my calendar, in the notes app on my phone, no new software and nothing fancy. Present me taking care of future me, before future me is too foggy or too maxed out to think straight.

This one is part of the mid-year series, and it picks up where the mid-year review left off. That episode helps you decide what you want from the back half of the year. This one is about how to protect your capacity so you have the room to pull it off.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why your capacity for the back half of the year is smaller than your plan assumes, and the specific reason your brain hides that from you
• The tiny habit that takes zero new tools, just the calendar and notes app you already have
• What a note to future you says when you are too deep in a flare to remember your own name
• How a single calendar note back in April keeps your kids from missing the whole summer in clothes that fit
• The difference between saying you take Fridays off and having a calendar that protects it from you
• Why summer quietly steals capacity even when the kids are in camp, and what to adjust before it happens
• The monthly reset that turns self-care from a thing you hope happens into a thing already booked

Key Concepts from the Episode

Notes to Future Me. Present you writes down what future you will need, before future you is too tired, too foggy, or too busy to figure it out from scratch. It lives in your calendar and your notes app, and it requires nothing else. Past you is the most underrated member of your support team.

Capacity Is More Than Time. Time is the capacity everyone counts. Mental load and emotional capacity are the two that run out first, especially for a woman carrying an entire household in her head. You can have a free afternoon and still have nothing left to spend.

Protect Yourself From Yourself. The people-pleaser will say yes to a call on your day off. The recovering workaholic will bulldoze the part of you that wants a slower pace. The habit exists because willpower loses that fight every time. Discipline is a decision you made once, written down where you can’t argue with it.

Your Calendar Is a Values Document. You can tell what someone prioritizes by what they have made room for, not by what they say matters. If your health and your relationships are not blocked off, they are not protected. “I don’t have time” almost always means “I didn’t put it on the calendar.”

Plan for Reality, Not Best Case. Twenty-six weeks left in the year does not mean twenty-six working weeks. Once you count the trip to Italy, cousin camp, the girls trip, and the holidays, the real number is closer to twenty-one. A plan built on your best week is a plan that breaks by August.

Resources Mentioned

Mid-Year Review Workbook. The free workbook from the previous episode, walking you through the back half of the year. 

The June CEO Retreats. Three formats are currently open: the Virtual CEO Retreat, the in-person Richmond CEO Retreat, and the On-Demand CEO Retreat. Pick the format that fits where you are right now. 

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

Subscribe & Review:

If you loved this episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

🎤 Thanks for listening! I'll see you next week!