Bespoke


with Danielle Cohen + Kelly Diels

Get Traction. Level Up. FLOURISH.

Business Development for Culture-Making Entrepreneurs Ready to Expand or Rebrand

(Or put the right foundations in place from the beginning)

ON YOUR TERMS. 

No shady tactics, blueprint obedience, masking, overextending, or burnout required

Of course big-dreaming, culture-making entrepreneurs want to move the dial…

…but what if the some of the dials are missing?

Imagine you’re a marathon cyclist —one of the best in your class! — and you just took delivery of a high-end performance bicycle that’s been made to your exact vision & specifications.

You open the box, and it’s all in pieces.

Gears. Spokes. Rubber. Handle bars. Chain. And a million screws, small and large.

Maybe all the parts are there. Maybe a few are missing.

You don’t know for sure because there’s no diagrams and no instructions for what parts should be included and how to put them all together.

Your dream bike is in pieces and not yet working as a finely tuned machine built to win.

But when you figure it out and put it all together…watch out, world.

All-in-pieces + no plan + maybe-some-parts-missing

is what most businesses experience in the first several years of their business before they get traction

In fact, that’s why they haven’t got the results they’re seeking…yet.

And that’s not just a cute anecdotal opinion…research confirms it.

There’s hard data about why businesses flounder

(and it’s not what we hear from most business trainings)

Studies show that pre-momentum businesses have these 2 things in common:

1. There are gaps in the business fundamentals. 

No matter what the industry, there are 6 core business competencies that every single business, must have in place.

Businesses that aren’t yet where their owners want them to be usually have a few of these competencies in place — and are probably doing those really well (albeit with a LOT of muscling & hustle)…

…but it’s when they decide, deliberately, to build out the whole suite of 6 core business competencies that the business finally starts working like clockwork and a whole new level of financial achievement unlocks.

In other words:
Some of the dials were missing.

Here’s what this can look like, in the day-to-day:

  • Even if they’re incredible at their actual work, and clients rave about them, they might be working way too hard for not enough money

  • Constantly needing to invent ad-hoc new offers to fill revenue gaps (because they don’t have a planned customer journey and corresponding, pre-defined suite of signature offers)

  • Unsure why some products work and others don’t (indicates a lack of clarity about what the client is willing to purchase and why)

  • Frustrated by a mismatch between their audience and their ideal client (the one who buys!)

  • Doing A LOT of marketing and promo work (especially on social media) that isn’t translating into sales

  • Feeling pressured to lower or raise prices based on industry norms rather than based on their overheard & revenue plan (because maybe there’s no plan or calculated pricing structure in the first place)

  • Revenue rollercoasters OR revenue plateaus

2. There is no business plan.

Study after study shows us these 2 critical things:

  • 90% of businesses don’t survive the first few years (or even their first decade) and almost all of the ones who struggle or cease operations DO NOT have a business plan.

    Business that succeed have a business plan…

    and the ones who don’t, don’t!

  • Having a business plan can mean 30% more growth.

In other words:
The instruction manual is missing.

And before you click away because writing a business plan feels like a non-essential activity done with time you don’t have, or like something you only do when you need a bank loan, or boring or intimidating and unnecessary —

Here’s what happened when we started doing this for our businesses:

When we started planning our launch calendars each year, we got out of burnout AND our bank accounts expanded…

...because we could budget our development work across time (no more frantic last-minute sprints) AND because launches mean we were actively selling (the greatest predictor of sales is actually being out there selling).

When we started running our numbers (including development costs in time and cash) to decide whether we would invent a new thing, often we decided NOT to — and when we did, we went all in to make it work. Again, this helps prevent burnout AND boosts the bottom line.

When we started calculating our prices based on our actual costs, overhead, opportunity costs, AND ENERGETIC CAPACITY, we stopped pricing on a feeling or what other people are charging or what seemed “appropriate” to charge.

Instead, we priced based on what our businesses actually NEEDED to charge to flourish.

As a result, our prices and proftis dramatically changed, for the better.

When we got forensically clear about the heart of our work — our theories of change, unique methodologies, and solutions — and which clients were ready and able to buy that (and why they wanted it), we developed specific sales processes & collateral we could come back to over and over again…that worked. Presto! More money, less overworking.

And when we knew all of that, we knew which marketing activities to focus on, when — and which unique metrics, specific to our custom businesses, tell us when we’re on track.

All of that, written down, could be 2-3 pages + a robust spreadsheets.

A business plan built on radical customer clarity, careful financial calculations, planning that respects your actual energetic capacities, plus high-quality strategy can be short in length but epic in impact.

Sources:

Shane, Scott A. The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, investors and Policy Makers Live. (2010). New Haven: Yale University Press.

Greene, F.J. and Hopp, C. (2017), Are Formal Planners More Likely To Achieve New Venture Viability? A Counterfactual Model And Analysis. Strat. Entrepreneurship J, 11: 36-60. https://doi.org/10.1002/sej.1245

Jan Brinckmann, Dietmar Grichnik, Diana Kapsa (2010), Should entrepreneurs plan or just storm the castle? A meta-analysis on contextual factors impacting the business planning–performance relationship in small firms. Journal of Business Venturing, Volume 25, Issue 1: 24-40, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2008.10.007

Delmar, F. and Shane, S. (2003), Does business planning facilitate the development of new ventures?. Strat. Mgmt. J., 24: 1165-1185. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.349

What all of that means is this:

It’s not the size of your social following. 

It’s not whether or not you can afford a star coach. 

It’s not differentiation or tech.

It’s not motivation; mindset; leadership; message or personal charisma. 

(All of those things improve on existing infrastructure — and yep, when they’re building on business foundations already in place, they can be magic. 

But they don’t do much, if anything, if the core business competencies needed to thrive are missing or not fully developed, in the first place.)

Businesses owners like you are always doing the most, but the tasks and activities they’re completing are often disjointed and disconnected.

Yes, lots of activities & tasks are happening inside the business, but there are missing links (aka core business competencies)…

…which means the activities are not working like dominoes or gears where one task sets the rest in motion, in a sequence that’s designed to automatically & consistently produces your desired outcomes:

REVENUE
AUTONOMY
PREDICTABILITY
PEACE OF MIND.

BUT.

So the problem most pre-momentum businesses are encountering isn’t usually a lack of founder talent, quality of work, being ‘bad at marketing’…

It’s simply that some of the pieces are missing AND they’re not working together, on-plan and by design.

And that is what Bespoke is designed to help you create:

a business customized to you, with all your core business competencies in place and working together, producing the autonomy, momentum & revenue breakthrough you’ve been envisioning since the beginning.

Bespoke is designed to set your business up for success

You will have your core business competencies in place.

They’ll be working together, by design, to produce a coherent result (REVENUE).

Your business model & sales strategies will be customized to fit your unique identity, preferences, principles and authentic capacity.

You will have a plan & daily guide that gets you on-track and keeps in momentum…day after day and on your terms.

Customizing your business to fit you,
crafting an instruction manual for your business
& making sure all the dials (core business competencies) are in place
is how your business stops floundering — or skips that part, entirely — and starts flourishing.

Bespoke is the opposite of business-in-a-box.

You’re not working from someone else’s script or inheriting a business model with problematic tactics that don’t align with your principles, your energy, or your lived reality.

Instead you’ll craft a custom business that works for you.

Here’s how Bespoke is different from almost everything out there — and why it works.

  • It is not a program with standard, cookie-cutter curriculum that you have to DIY on your own, when you have time (and somehow the time never appears)…

  • It’s not one of those " masterminds” with hundreds or thousands of people where you get lost in the crowd and don’t have access to direct feedback & coaching from the “coach” you paid to work with…

  • It’s not yet another blueprint that you have to contort yourself into, obey, and swallow your principles to implement…  

Instead, in Bespoke, you will:

  • Be part of a hand-selected, intimate cohort of 20 people (max)

  • Get direct access to two experienced, sought-after business development coaches in tiny group coaching sessions and intimate breakout rooms, week in and week out

  • Get trained in the 6 core business competencies and get support customizing them to fit you and your business

  • Actively build out your 6 core business competencies and your marketing & sales plans during our meetings (because if it is on your calendar, it will get done) with guidance and expert feedback from your two coaches IN THE MOMENT so you don’t get stuck or stall out 

Bespoke is specifically designed to include:

teaching time so that you get the skills & training you need to up-level your business

implementation time for building out the 6 core business competencies DURING CLASS

and high-touch live coaching & workshopping in a very small cohort so you don’t get stuck or lost in the crowd

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Bespoke uses a workshopping approach to business development.

Bespoke members don’t get lost in passive action by learning about business instead of doing it; instead the design of the program means you’re building out what you’re learning, in real time…so that the foundations and plans for your revenue breakthrough actually get put in place

Group coaching sessions include time for:

  • Teaching,

  • Application,

  • and Laser-Coaching

After the teaching, you’ll go into breakout rooms and you complete a business development exercise designed to build out one of your 6 core business competencies

Danielle and Kelly circulate through the breakout rooms, offering laser-coaching, feedback and tweaking so you don’t spin your wheels, get stuck or lost in a crowd. Instead you complete foundational activities that build out the core business competencies you need to flourish.

No homework no busywork just foundations AND momentum.

At the end of it all: you have a business plan.

You know what to do, when.

You understand what you will be doing and what you will NOT be doing.

You’ll have a business model & sales strategy customized to fit your unique strengths, preferences & authentic capacity

You’ll prioritize a specific set of business-generating activities — ones that actually move the dial in your unique business — so you can ditch irrelevant marketing tasks, stay laser focused, and stop overworking (working on only the right things instead of everything under the sun is a game-changer)

You’ll have all 6 core business competencies in place AND working together, in a cohesive system designed to produce the revenue & momentum you’ve been working towards

Meet Your Teachers

DANIELLE COHEN and KELLY DIELS

Bespoke is designed to equip you with the custom business model & the core business competencies you need to stop ad-hocking and start systemizing your business results…

…within your authentic capacity.

(No more trial-and-error, no more wasting years trying to figure it out on your own, and no more over-efforting and under-earning!)

WE’RE LIFELONG ENTREPRENEURS and successful brand-builders — together, we have more than 58 years of successful business-building experience.

We’ve worked with the whole gamut of businesses — from national & international organizations, to some of the biggest names in the online arena, to tiny teams with long histories of doing inventive & healing work, to visionary new entrepreneurs with game-changing ideas.

Luminaries and culture-makers, all.

We do our business-development work through a systemic lens that respects our lived realities and yours.

We’re both neuro-diverse, for example. We both grapple with chronic health shit.

And although we’re now running high-revenue businesses, we each started out as wildly under-resourced single moms to LOTS of kids.

So yes, we started businesses because we had to. 

But we stayed in them because they enabled us to do culture-making, meaningful work that really, really matters…

…while making great money that changed our lives and the lives of our families.

In other words: we had to go rogue and develop custom businesses, on our terms, based on our real and non-negotiable commitments and capacities, and they had to succeed.

So we get it. 

And we’ve got time-tested, proven business-development skills & tools that work.

 We’d be honoured to teach them to you in Bespoke.

I’mDanielle Cohen.

I'm a visibility coach, and photographer, with a rich background in attachment theory, trauma-informed and equity-centered coaching, somatic practices, healing arts, and my own layered lived experiences.

I help prosocial visionary coaches, leaders, artists, and healers with big dreams create conditions for thriving.

My goal is to help you live into the beautiful visions you hold for yourself and the world so you get to experience the satisfaction, fulfillment, and energy that comes from doing the work you’re here to do, inside of a business that’s designed to support YOU as well as your beloved clients.

I’mKelly Diels, founder of We Are The Culture Makers.

I'm a business development coach with a background in corporate & non-profit marketing with a pit-stop teaching Political Theory. As one does.

I help socially responsible entrepreneurs make money AND meaning.

My work is inclusive, systemically-informed and I'm ridiculously, relentlessly practical about money, pricing and building out our businesses to thrive. Because I know we are building the institutions of the future.

My work has been featured in Forbes, Jezebel, Salon, Alternet and cited in several culture-making books.

Bespoke is designed for:

Entrepreneurs who are great at what they do, have clients that adore them, but haven’t yet had the revenue breakthrough or gotten the traction they’re envisioning

Businesses that have strong revenue but behind-the-scenes are hell to run, or feel like they aren’t yet running like clockwork (despite their achievements, the entrepreneurs running them often feel like they haven’t quite gotten their shit together)

Professionals who are really skilled and ready to build a business around their talents and authentic capacity

Businesses unleveling and ready to rebrand — this is the foundational work you do to make your next chapter inevitable

At each of these specific pivot points in your business, ensuring that you have your core business competencies in place AND a bespoke plan for success are what set you up to flourish.

Meeting Dates + Times

  • Every week on Wed

    from Mar 20 until Jul 10, 2024

    2pm to 3:30pm EST

    16 meetings

    Mar 20, 2024 2:00 PM

    Mar 27, 2024 2:00 PM

    Apr 3, 2024 2:00 PM

    Apr 10, 2024 2:00 PM

    Apr 17, 2024 2:00 PM

    Apr 24, 2024 2:00 PM

    May 1, 2024 2:00 PM

    May 8, 2024 2:00 PM

    May 15, 2024 2:00 PM

    May 22, 2024 2:00 PM

    May 29, 2024 2:00 PM

    Jun 5, 2024 2:00 PM

    Jun 12, 2024 2:00 PM

    Jun 19, 2024 2:00 PM

    Jun 26, 2024 2:00 PM

    Jul 10, 2024 2:00 PM

When does Bespoke start?

4 months of instruction & implementation | 15 group-coaching sessions | March - June 2024

Class starts on March 20th, 2024

Want to train for your next level of business success and have us in your corner?

We’d be honored to help you custom-craft the next flourishing chapter of your business.

Let’s review everything you’re getting in
BESPOKE, shall we?

15 LIVE COACHING CALLS

Get feedback on your business plans, workshop your ideas & the custom strategies you’re developing, get support dissolving the business fears, visibility hesitancies or money wounds tripping you up so you can stay track to create your flourishing livelihood.

PRICING & REVENUE PLANNING SPREADSHEET TOOLS

You’ll use these spreadsheets again and again,, to identify your revenue mix and grow your business from month-to-month and year to year.

6 CORE BUSINESS COMPETENCIES

Robust skill-sharing and step-by-step guidance from two seasoned, successful entrepreneurs with deep social commitments.

2 PAGE SALES & MARKETING PLAN TOOL

Identify & measure the high-value marketing activities specific to your custom business model — the ones that actually generate real sales & real momentum…and say no to the rest.

2 BONUS SACRED TIME CO-WORKING CALLS

Bring your tough-to-tackle-alone tasks and lean into the power of body doubling, protection, grounding, space, and time to get them done.

4 LIVE, GUIDED
MEDITATIONS

Join our meditation teacher, Ntathu Allen, in these sessions designed specifically to help you rest, repattern, and bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.

It’s all the tools, wisdom & support you need to

CRAFT a Flourishing bUSINESS that GETS THE TRACTION YOU’re SEEKINg

…within your authentic capacity and on your terms.

4 MONTH GROUP COACHING INTENSIVE

with Danielle Cohen & Kelly Diels

Max 20 People | We start March Mar 20th, 2024

$3,000

PAYMENT PLANS AVAILABLE:

4 MONTHLY PAYMENTS OF $750
OR 12 WEEKLY PAYMENTS OF $250