Every quarter I do a business review hosted by my mentor Stephanie Dodier inside her alumni group. For 5 years, her work in the non-diet space has been the most inspiring professional container I participate in.
The framework is built around six questions. It sounds simple, until you actually sit with it and notice what assumptions you brought to the table before you answered a single question.
I want to share my most recent process with you.
The six questions
Here’s the framework:
1. What worked? What do you want to keep doing?
Don’t limit yourself to just tactics. Also consider how you felt, what gave you energy, what flowed, etc.
2. What do you want to stop or have less of?
This can include pressure, patterns, and pricing that’s outdated.
3. What do you want to add or have more of?
More clients, maybe, but also more spaciousness, more connection, more of whatever’s been missing.
4. Powerful thinking
This is the one that asks the most of you. The instruction is to write in present tense, as if what you want has already happened. The goal is to move your brain from “here’s what’s in the way” toward “here’s what’s possible.” It brings to light the beliefs you need to hold in order to get where you’re going.
5. What are you celebrating at the end of this quarter?
Write it in present tense, as if the quarter is over and it went well. Be specific, not vague.
6. What do you need to believe in order to get there?
This is where thought errors live. And it’s the question that unearthed a web of subconcious thoughts I didn’t know I had.
The assumption I didn’t know I had
I went into this exercise thinking I was being honest with myself.
I knew I wanted this upcoming quarter to be intentionally lighter due to some personal priorities I wanted to leave time and space for. I wasn’t going into it trying to grow. I just wanted to maintain or maybe even rest a little.
When I got to question three I immediately felt uncomfortable.
What do you want more of?
A part of me said, “You’re supposed to want more clients, more revenue, more hours. That’s what a good quarterly review produces”. Wanting maintenance felt like admitting I wasn’t serious enough about building this.
Then I recognized a thought error I’ve caught before: the belief that more money requires more hours. That growth and rest are mutually exclusive. That wanting a lighter quarter means accepting less. I know that’s not true.
What I actually want
Once I identified it, the solution was obvious.
I have a few clients who’ve been grandfathered into rates that no longer reflect the scope of what I deliver. Raising those rates at renewal isn’t working more, it’s being paid appropriately for what I’m already doing. Having that uncomfortable conversation is the thing I have to work through.
What I actually want this quarter: a waitlist forming, qualified leads coming in through ads, a handful of Visibility Clarity Audits, and rates that reflect the work.
That’s a growth quarter. It just doesn’t look like the hustle my brain was conditioned to believe is virtuous.
The powerful thinking section was what helped me get there. Writing in present tense, “people will wait for my service”, “my deliverables save my clients time and energy they get to spend elsewhere” is practicing the belief that has to be in place before the behavior follows. You don’t build a waitlist from a scarcity mindset. You build it from the conviction that what you offer is worth waiting for.
Why I’m writing about this for you
Most providers I work with approach their visibility the same way I approached this quarterly review: with assumptions like, “I need more. More content, more platforms, more lead magnets, more reach. If it’s not working, I need to do more of it”.
That assumption is almost never where the actual problem is.
The Visibility Clarity Audit is basically the marketing version of this quarterly review. Its job is to bring your awareness to what’s actually happening in your visibility system. What’s working, what’s leaking, what’s costing you energy without moving anything, so you can stop spending time on the wrong things and put it toward the right ones.
Sometimes the answer is a rate conversation you’ve been avoiding. Sometimes it’s a lead magnet that already exists and just needs a nurture sequence behind it. Sometimes it’s the realization that your referral relationships are outperforming everything else and you haven’t made them intentional.
You need clearer visibility pointed at the right things, with the energy you actually have.
Try the six questions yourself
Set aside 30-45 minutes. Be honest about what you actually want, not what you think a good answer looks like. Pay attention to question six, what you need to believe, because that’s usually where the real work is.
And if you want a version of this exercise for your marketing specifically, the 10 Minute Funnel Fix is a free place to start. It’ll show you where your visibility is losing people so you know what actually deserves your attention next quarter.
